DEDICATION

I hope you dig it, Dad and Gramps.

Thanks for introducing me

to Marlowe, Spade, and Hammer.

I miss you guys.

Thanks, Russell

CHAPTER 1

It wasn’t raining, but that couldn’t last. For once I didn’t have my collar flipped up against the slush and cold water drizzling down my back, didn’t have my hat jammed tight on my head against a Pacific wind that carried shivers.

It was a nice day. Nice days never last long in Puyallup, and the fair weather just made my mood even fouler; I had work to do, naturally. Lots of it. The shining sun didn’t help the street any; it was still empty. Folks were scared.

The Better-Than-Life den, a tenement building taken over by dealers and burners, waited for me just down the street. BTL chips, intricate computer programs carrying fake memories and false experiences, tailor-written entertainment that overrode safety protocols, made for a bad hobby, but a good business. This particular chip-head hole, a place run by a two-bit razorguy who called himself Tinman on account of a chromed-up arm and leg, was a real dive. The place had been operating for about six weeks. Tinman had muscled out most of the decent folks in the building, taken sledgehammers to the walls and the citizens that stood in his way, and turned a handful of apartments into his own little wasteland. It was one part recording studio, a programming center for chip creation and reproduction, and one part safe place where his clients themselves, the burnouts who used these chips to escape reality and walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, could squat and fry.

Slotting BTL chips was dangerous work. I knew that better than most. A beetle-head had the rest of his brain turned off, just sat there, eyes wide shut, tasting fake food, feeling fake women, slinging fake spells, living a fake life. You lived a movie instead of watching it, and that just wasn’t safe—an addict soon left reality behind for the 24/7 fantasy. You couldn’t chip out just anywhere. Tinman was tough enough and scary enough that no one messed with his customers while they were sprawled out in his joint.

Well, almost no one.

An ork punk stood out front, all synth-leather and broad shoulders, no neck to speak of, and not much in his head but plugs and meanness. A shotgun was within arm’s reach, and Tinman made sure the whole neighborhood knew the double-barrel was packing explosive ammo; nothing in half-measures, no expense spared. The street muscle was big and dumb, even for an ork. A doorman’s number one job was always to look scarier than the door he stood next to.

“Hoi, chummer,” I said around an unlit Target dangling at the edge of my mouth. “Got a light?”

He didn’t reach into his coat to help a brother out, naturally. This wasn’t that kind of neighborhood, and he wasn’t that kind of guy. He did roll his eyes, though, and that was opening enough for me.

My left fist came up fast, hit him just under his warty chin, then my right swung around in a big overhand that smashed square into a yellowed tusk. One wingtip flew up between his thighs to keep the pain coming and mess with his balance, and as I stepped back down I put all my weight and forward momentum into another big right and he dropped. Even an ork-thick skull didn’t help much against a decent punch and the added oomph of the densiplast plates sewn into the knuckles of my lucky gloves. That’s why they were lucky.

I stooped to grab the old shotgun propped against the wall, and pointedly looked up, square at their small security camera, as I straightened.

“Yo, Tinny.” I broke the shotgun open, made sure it was loaded, then snapped it shut with a flick of my wrist. “What did I tell you?”

I knew that a few rooms away, Tinman and his chiphead buddies would be getting hollered at by their security man right now. I knew they’d start scrambling around, going for guns, shouting, cursing a lot. I knew they’d recognize me. I knew Tinman and his boys thought they were safe behind their door, that it would buy them time.

I also knew they were rocking a Gatehouse Nine series security door, with an up-gunned Draco-Hoard maglock sporting a thumbprint scanner and RFID chip sensors. I knew they could buzz the door open from inside, or the ork doorman could open it, but only when the biomonitor—a solid model, not too shabby, even compared to my top of the line headware Corpsman—read steady vitals. I knew Tinman thought he’d been really smart when he installed it, invested heavily in it, told the whole neighborhood about it, showed it off to every chiphead junky screw-up that walked past it.

I knew Tinman was an idiot, though, who hadn’t worried about properly reinforcing the doorframe itself in this crumbling, half-dead, piece of crap apartment. I’d talked to those junkies, seen the door myself, done a little homework, and put the schematics and installation instructions into the supercomputer I kept hidden in my skull.

I leaned into it as I wedged the shotgun’s muzzle snug against the door, opposite the fancy-pants maglock, right where my headware computer told me it was 285 millimeters away from the top of the door. I dipped my head and tugged the brim of my hat down low, then pulled the trigger and waited for the bits of hinge and doorframe to stop flying.

“Knock, knock.” I rolled with the recoil, then took a knee before slamming the old Stoeger shotgun’s muzzle exactly 320 millimeters away from the bottom of the door. One hinge down, one to go.

After the second shot, it just took a few kicks to send several thousand nuyen’s worth of security door and top-of-the-line electronics thumping to the ground. I dropped the shotgun, drew my Colt from its holster, and let the muzzle lead me in.

One of Tinman’s muscleheads greeted me in the entrance hallway. His Ares Predator barked, and I took two to the chest—giving him a wolfish grin over the iron sights of my Model 2061—before I blasted him to the floor with a trio of shots.

It wasn’t his fault, really. He’d lined up his shots better’n most, but how was he supposed to know what a cheater I was? My ally spirit, Ariana, floated just overhead, watching over me from the other side of reality. Bobbing and idling on the astral plane, she was tethered to me by a handful of protective spells, wards of armor and vitality, sustained enchantments that increased my strength and speed. She longed to join me, but I’d made her promise to stay put and help out from the other side. As magical friends go, she’s pretty great. I was making a statement here, settling the books with blood and bullets instead of magical flash; but that didn’t mean I wasn’t above using a little mojo to tip the balance of things in my favor.

I put two more into the downed razorboy’s chest just for punctuation, adding to the noise, making sure everyone had been jerked out of their chip-ride by real life.

“Hands up and move fast if you want to live, beetle-heads!” I hollered in my best Lone Star command voice. “I see a gun, I’m putting down the man holding it!”

I let them flood past me, then, Colt at the ready but sliding the smartlink targeting pip over skinny form after skinny form, all of them in rags and cheap vending-machine clothes, most with the red eyes of deep-dream BTL junkies.

I was glad for my usual cyberoptics’ color filters, making them all look just a step removed from real life, just a shade less close to me, greyscale images as they shambled by, sparing me the most specific details of their many ailments. Here and there they were polka-dotted with open sores, more than a few had cracked lips and bitten-ragged fingernails, raw infections around hastily-implanted chipjacks. My cyberoptics took it all in, my headware categorized it all, the Sideways gene-treatment that made me live my life in slow-motion ensured I noticed every little detail. Six, then eight, then a dozen, all dark-toothed and grimy, rail-thin from malnourishment, bundles of knees and elbows scrambling in fear, they pushed and jostled past me, scrambling over the corpse of Tinman’s bouncer. Even my headware couldn’t tell me who, but some enterprising soul in their mad rush had still had enough smarts to grab the man’s gun, another his belt, and someone darted away with his left boot.

I figured the doorman out front would get a more thorough Puyallup rolling, if he hadn’t already.

My Colt up and ready, I knifed around the corner and into the main hallway. It had been a long time since Fast Response Team training on room clearance, but the basics stuck with you, and it’s not like my life ever let me get real rusty at this sort of thing. My smartlink pip and iron sights led the way, rounding corners and sweeping into rooms.

Sweeping the first room, I saw nothing but an assortment of filthy pillows and sweat-stained mattresses scattered on the floor, empty chip cases and broken glass bottles, protein bar wrappers, stains in the corners, something green-grey growing up the far wall. Rough edges scarred the room, where flimsy interior walls had once separated this into two apartments, and less-than-great care had been taken with the demolition and clean-up process. No one that used this place cared—about anything except slotting in. It was the playroom, where chipheads could squat and zone out for hours or days, so long as the nuyen kept coming. You could probably burn this place to the ground and it’d never smell clean.

My gene-tweaked neuroproteins and Transys headware supercomputer desperately sought patterns in the chaos, counted every piece of detritus in the place, tried to feed me clues about behavioral patterns based on forensic evidence, but eventually gave up. There wasn’t a pattern to be found there. There was no logic to it. The rooms where chipheads killed themselves didn’t have to make sense. My gut already knew that, it just took my head a while to agree.

My cyberaudio suite picked up the sound of a hammer being cocked as I turned to step back into the hall, and Ari’s mojo and my Sideways helped me lurch backwards as a pistol round slapped into the doorframe where my head had been. There were limits to Ari’s magical protection. I had a tac-vest on under my Kevlar-laced long coat, which had helped with the shot to the chest, but nothing but her mojo was protecting my face.  A head shot would’ve done a number on me.

I emptied the rest of my magazine out into the hallway, in the general direction of the shooter, but it was enough to my ear upgrades to tell me more of a story. As I grabbed a fresh mag from my belt and slapped it home, one guy grunted, the other cursed. I had good ears. I made out scuffs of shoes on the floor, separate footfalls as someone ground loose plaster into the floorboards, the rustle of cheap synthleather against an interior wall, the just-audible whine of a cheap external smartlink’s battery pack. Sounded like two guys.

“Listen boys, this is between me an’ your boss. No one else has to die here. Now drop those pop guns and lay down, or I’m gonna lay you down.”

I didn’t expect them to surrender, don’t get me wrong. Anyone working as this sort of low-rent muscle was bottom of the barrel, even where Puyallup was concerned. I knew Tinman’s guys, and I knew what caliber of punk he kept on the payroll. I knew what they did. They were the used-ups and the burn-outs, the guys running secondhand implants a generation or two behind, the guys who’d do anything to anyone for a job and a taste of making folks afraid, the sort of skull-fried thugs who took their payment in goods instead of nuyen. Tinman didn’t hire ’em ’cause they were the introspective sort, given to pondering philosophical questions of life and death, the morality of their place of employment, or the odds of getting out of the business in one piece. No, he hired them ’cause they worked cheap.

The streams of profanity and bravado they sent down the hallway did what I needed, though; confirmed numbers and location. Say what you want about Lone Star—hell, I’ll cuss ’em out right with you—but before they let me go, they gave me some pretty handy headware.

I came around the corner while they were still cussing at me and shouting threats. I watched the ammo marker on my smartlink display dip as I poured round after round into, or rather through, the wall one of them was using for cover. Plaster flew, then blood, then I heard him tumble to the ground. A split-second later, so did my second empty magazine. As I pulled a fresh one off my belt, a round whizzed past my head so close it sounded like a clap in my ear.

The thug crowed insults at my family in a gutter-lingo bastard child of Spanish and Japanese—my vocabulary of curses and profanities was terribly global—and fired at me again, his troll-sized Ruger wheelgun looking absurdly oversized; partially because he was just a human struggling to hold it in two hands, partially because every gun looks a bit bigger when you’re staring down the barrel. He fired again, but the recoil from the first shot still had him unsteady and aiming high.

My slide slammed forward, mental commands chambered a fresh round, and I lined up the targeting reticule while he staggered and tried to line up his stupid-big Ruger again. My shot smacked into his forehead and left a mess on the wall behind him as he dropped to the stained carpet.

I angled my Colt as I rounded the corner, shifting the plane of the sights and smartlink, leaning around with my smartgun’s muzzle leading the way. I snapped off a quick shot as one more of Tinman’s boys lunged back into a side room halfway down the hallway, reticule hovering over a jacket so ugly even my color filters didn’t fully spare me, and was rewarded by a groan of pain. I ducked back around the corner as his gun-arm stuck out into the hallway and a long burst of autofire rang out.

He laid on his trigger, and I waited it out. Plaster and paint flew as his blocky little submachinegun chattered, and I stayed out of sight while my headware and Sideways-infused compulsion counted the rounds. Thirty-two. Even Tinman’s second-rate muscle weren’t stupid enough to spray and pray with their only ammo, so as soon as I heard his empty magazine hit the floor, I made a big show of waving my arm around the corner like I was about to come out—sure enough, I snatched it back just in time, and he leaned on the trigger again.

My Transys Avalon and TacWhisper, headware computer and cyberears, worked their magic again. As soon as thirty-two distinct firing sounds were registered, I went around the corner again, this time catching him in the middle of fumbling for his next magazine. My reticule danced square in his center-of-mass as I advanced down the hallway. I slid my point of aim higher, past the faintly glowing plaid pattern of the world’s ugliest armored jacket, and right at the bridge of his nose, I squeezed the trigger just so.

I didn’t get a satisfying bang and the buck of recoil. My smartlink pip dissolved in a burst of static, I got four different pop-up displays warning me about malfunctions, and my magazine fell right out of the bottom of my Colt.

Well, crap.

A mental command shoved the warning messages out of my field of vision even as my audio suite picked up a giggle from the side room Ugly Jacket had been ducking into.

It only took us an eyeblink, both standing there with empty guns. I could’ve tugged the knife from my pocket and tried my luck. I could’ve gone for my wand and seen what combat mojo I could whip up, keeping my distance and using old instincts and the flickers of power I still clung to. I could’ve reached to the offside of my belt for my last reload, betting I’d be quicker than Ugly Jacket. Instead, I just rushed him while he fumbled at the pocket of his ridiculously baggy cargo shorts, trying to free another magazine.

Empty or not, a gun’s still a weapon, or at least a tool. The Colt Model 2061, the commemorative 150th anniversary edition of that seminal semi-automatic handgun, is a well-crafted machine of violence. My particular model, an academy graduation gift from my father, is gun-blued and traditional, even for 1911 clones, with tasteful—and real—rosewood grips, simple ergonomics, an unobtrusive internal smartlink, and a traditionalist’s wary view of modern lightweight polymers. In other words, even unloaded, the thing’s a handy 1.12 kilograms of metal and wood, and not something any rational human being wants to get cracked in the face with.

My shoulder slammed into Ugly Jacket’s ugly jacket, and both of us hit the ground, him with his neck wedged against the doorframe and my weight blasting the air from his lungs. A single, long cyberspur burst from the back of his left hand—he had a second port, but must’ve sold off that other blade—and swiped wildly at me.

I reared back as he slashed, then grabbed him by the forearm. Leaning forward, I pinned his blade-hand against his side and, holding him beneath me, lifted my blocky pistol and smashed him in the head with it. Then again. And again. And again. It only took those few swings, gun butt sharp and hard against human flesh and bone, before he stopped struggling.

Snarling, I lurched to my feet and saw a pair of scuffed combat boots poking out amid a tangle of wires and cables beneath a workbench. Three strides carried me across the room, and thanks to Ari’s loaned mojo, one good kick sent the bench and the punk beneath it flying. My optics snapped a quick look while he was in midair, and for an instant the light flashed against a glossy touchscreen tablet strapped to his wrist. His fingertips danced over it even as he half-slumped against a wall, and I knew what had happened to my smartlink.

Moving smoothly and calmly, I reached for my last magazine and fed it into the empty well of my Colt. A thumb-swipe against the slide release snapped it forward, chambering a fresh round. I lifted it, fingers certain and grip comfortable, and lined up my front and rear sights, smartlink targeting pip nowhere to be seen. He typed faster, licking cracked lips.

“I turned off my wireless after you tried that the first time.” I didn’t quite smile as I said it.

He stopped tapping at the softly glowing screen of his cyberdeck, and raised a hand to block the sight of me, like not seeing it coming meant it wasn’t. The Colt bucked in my hand, and his arm fell. The Sprawl had one less hacker in it.

I looked around, and immediately regretted it. My lawman’s gut didn’t obsess over details needlessly, but implants did; I didn’t have time to play Count The Cord in a room like this. I was in their workshop, where the chips were burnt and mass-produced. The workbench I’d splintered against the wall was covered in now-broken electronics, tangled masses of wires—most of them patched and re-patched time and again, even now a few sparking—leading from device to device, banks of processors, chip burners, replicators, and simrig terminals. This was where the memories and experiences were synthesized and programmed, which meant…

A glance showed me where the thickest bundle of wires headed, and the rough-hewn hole in the wall, leading next door, betrayed the scuff of steel on steel to my ears. Tinman. Finally.

I waited, letting my cyberears do their work while rebooting my smartlink and running antivirus protocols with quick mental commands. The next room was well lit, and the soft whir of recording equipment could be heard. The whisper of static told me the audio gear was live as well.

“We had an agreement, Tinman.”

I took a step along the braid of wires, Colt up.

“Fuck you, Kincaid!”

“Three little rules, Tinman. Three little rules, and you couldn’t even follow them.”

A boxy little Cobra submachinegun snaked around the corner at me, held in a tinned-chrome hand. I didn’t duck out of the way and wait it out like I had with his gun-thug’s Cobra down the hall. Instead I put a double-tap into the wall even as his muzzle rounded the corner, earning a grunt of pain from the other side of the drywall and his gun withdrawing.

“I said no selling to kids.”

I fired into the plaster again, a little further from the hole, blasting right where my thermoptics showed his heat leaking into the wall.

I remembered the mother who’d come to me three days ago, asking me to do something about Tinman and his little nest. She told me her son was a good boy—they always do—but that he’d fallen in with a bad crowd—they always do. She had told me he was too young for this sort of thing, but that Tinman’s crew had lent him the money for a ’jack, then charged him ridiculous interest to put him in a deep hole. She told me they’d pushed him into peddling chips at school to pay them back, and when Knight Errant had taken her son away, they hadn’t cared about the rest. She told me how the ork manning the door had beaten her when she’d confronted them. She came to my office, begging, bruised, offering enchiladas and prayers if I could help her. I’d almost stormed the place and killed them right then.

“I said no snuff.”

I fired again, methodically, blasting clean through the thin interior wall, putting round after round into him. He had dermal plating, I knew, and who-knows-what other combat augs.

There was nothing wrong with him enough bullets couldn’t fix, though.

I remembered the chips my investigation had turned up, the chips I’d had a friend scan—not wanting to slot them, and wanting Skip and Trace to know I wasn’t wanting to slot them—and the way they’d almost turned even her bounty hunter’s stomach. Trace didn’t get green around the gills very easily, and just bouncing through thirty-second intervals of a forty-minute BTL chip, even with all the safety filters churning on her hand-crafted cyberdeck, it had been enough to knock her speechless and grim. She’d just nodded at me instead of going into detail, and her girlfriend, Skip, had wanted to punch me for asking the favor in the first place.

Tinman and his boys were selling murder-porn, the experience of killing someone, the high of ending an innocent life in tortuous detail. Snuff chips were bad juju. The worst kind of karma out there. They were killing people just for kicks, and then selling the thrill to anyone who wanted to slot the chip. I’d almost stormed the place and killed them right then.

“And I said no Turbo Bunny.”

I emptied the rest of the magazine through the wall into him, still slowly walking forward, still cycling through vision modes, smartlink pip dancing over his heat signature as the air filled with plaster dust.

I remembered my friend, my ex; the girl who’d gotten me into BTL chips all those years ago, and the girl who’d helped me get off them. I remembered seeing her during my three days of stakeout, wanting to shout at her or shoot at her, but instead forcing myself to just watch her come and go on her own. You couldn’t help someone else when they were craving—they had to help themselves. Her sleek racing bike had slowed to a crawl once, come to a full stop a second time, and the third and fourth she’d pulled up to the curb, taken her helmet off, let her hair flow gorgeous and long and elf-perfect, my cybereyes zooming in and leaving no doubt about who she was. She’d stopped, but she’d never gotten off her bike. I’d heard them cat-calling her, seen Tinman out front waving at her, offering her discounts, and then cursing as she’d pulled away. She’d been tempted, but she hadn’t bought anything. It stung that she hadn’t called me. It stung that she’d known to come here, and they’d tried their damnedest to get the claws back in her, despite my warning. I’d almost stormed the place and killed them right then.

“Three little rules, Tinman. Just three. And you had to fuck up every single one of them.”

He crawled away from me on his belly, scratching chromed-up arms through a pool of blood, trying to reach the gun he’d dropped. I stepped up and into this last room, their recording studio, and stooped down to pick up his dropped Cobra.

“No kids. No killing. No Tee-Bee. That was it. All you had to do was follow those three rules, and it was live and let live. I know you paid off Knight Errant. I know you keep the peace in this neighborhood. I know you say you mostly leave folks alone. I know you keep your beetle-heads safe. I know you say you’re just offering folks a distraction, and that even SINless folks’ve got a right to get away every once in a while. I know all that.”

Tinman rolled over onto his back, groaning, looking up at me from a tiled floor with a drain in the middle. Half his head was shining from a sweat-sheen of fear, the other half gleaming chrome in the hard lights of the room. His metal side—the arm, the leg, half of his face—scraped and skittered on the tiles as he tried to drag himself away, leaking almost as much hydraulic and battery fluid as blood. He’d chromed himself up to look tough, inhuman, intimidating.  Now he was just a broken piece of machinery.

There were lights and cameras all over the room, some of them pulled down by his crawling and tumbling, others still on, still rolling, still recording. This was where they made the movies, this two-bit studio, right here. This is where they killed for fun and profit, where they spent hours and hours making the recordings they pushed on kids and burnouts, making a new generation of psychos and junky chipheads.

“Three rules, and you couldn’t do it past, what, a month?”

I leveled the boxy Cobra.

“Puyallup’s tired of your shit, Tinman. The neighborhood doesn’t want you here. And that means I don’t either.”

He whimpered something, but I was way beyond listening. I emptied the magazine into him, making sure.

Sending a message.

I left all the equipment running as I left, fishing my pack of Targets from inside my coat, letting a smoke hang from my mouth as I stepped over corpses and cables, making my way back outside into the Puyallup ash. A soft rain was falling, and I held onto my smoke, leaned my head back, and peered up into the ash-grey clouds overhead. My cyberoptics flicked from side to side, glancing around at windows, curtains opening, the neighborhood coming back to life, just a little. 

I listened to the rain as I walked down the street to my Ford a few doors down. Ari’s spells slipped away from me, the mild tingle of being cocooned in upkept enhancements ended, and soon she was hovering in the air next to me, moving her legs, even though she wasn’t walking. She was a creature of aether and will, imagination and power, summoned from the metaplane of elemental earth—giving her coppery skin, silver-shining hair, eyes like jewels—but with powers that transcended those of a normal spirit or elemental.

She was also probably my best friend.

Ariana spun like a schoolgirl, and made a point of physically manifesting enough to stomp on a small puddle, giggling, whirling.

The street came alive, bit by bit, just minutes after the last gunshots echoed away. It hadn’t taken me long to recover my empty magazines, make sure the down were down, and saunter outside, but the neighborhood responded quickly, nevertheless. Everyone knew what had been happening in that BTL den, and everyone knew it wouldn’t happen there any more.

An old ork with wisps of white hair clinging in a semicircle over his ears gave me a one-tusked nod from a stoop. A towheaded little girl gaped and waved at Ariana with her secondhand dolly’s little plastic arm, then ducked shyly back from her window. Someone turned their radio back on, filling the street with music instead of gunfire. Mrs. Ramirez appeared on the sidewalk after a few moments, hurrying against the rain as she left a warm tray on the hood of my car.

I allowed myself a smile, willed some of the street’s life energy into my control, and squinted down at the end of my cigarette. The cherry smoldered to life, and for once no wave of exhaustion followed even this minor spell. Ari beamed at me. The streets were life. Life was power. Power was magic.

I waved at Mrs. Ramirez before picking up the tray of enchiladas and sliding a few days’ worth of supper onto the passenger seat of my big Ford. Ari drifted soundlessly through the side of the car and into the back seat, and then we drove off.

Simple as that. No one would call Knight Errant for Tinman and his crew. The footage might show up on the Matrix somewhere, though, posted in dark corners that the cops didn’t care about, and all the right people would learn all the right things from it.

Puyallup is bad enough already. The locals don’t want any more of your trouble here. And if you’re too naughty, Jimmy Kincaid will pay you a visit.

CHAPTER 2

I sucked down a protein shake, lukewarm chocolate and terrible, and reloaded my Colt thanks to the spare 2061 mag in my glove compartment—who ain’t got one?—while cutting across town to my next gig. Story of my life; juggling jobs, balancing responsibilities, making my way from one scraping-by contract to another. 

I let my ugly Ford’s auto-nav system do most of the work while rebooting everything on or in me to make sure I’d completely shaken off that hacker’s nonsense. My Colt was fine, my Transys headware was doing okay, my implanted Corpsman med-system checked out, and—while all those diagnostics were rolling—my Ford dragged me out onto the highway, southbound. I call the north end of Puyallup home, but I had biz with a southie crew.

Cleaning up Tinman’s band of psychos had been personal as much as professional, but I had bills to pay. Paranormal investigator or not, most of my work was just like your average private dick: snooping on cheating spouses, catching deadbeat parents, supplying video evidence for custody cases. Real glamorous, enlightening stuff. My bread and butter came from standard private eye jobs, spying on folks in entirely legal ways. My magic, no matter how burned out it might be, opened a few other doors for me, too, but that was legit stuff, most of the time. Laying down wards, using a few tricks other guys didn’t have when it came to finding a lost whatever-the-hell, that sort of thing. 

That said? Standard eye-on-the-street work wasn’t all I had to offer (which is good, ’cause any chump with the cred can get a spy drone for pretty cheap these days). I had the neighborhood connections and street cred, legal and otherwise, to also get the occasional bodyguard gig, to be asked to handle block disputes, and—every now and then—the shape of my elven ears got me a job, too.

I’m not as elfy as some. I never picked up much Sperethiel, I’m not sure how much I buy into this whole ancient culture malarkey, I’ve never visited, or wanted to visit, Tír Tairngire, my ‘promised elven homeland,’ or whatever. That said, there are folks in Puyallup who do buy into it, and buy into it hard. And they’ve got money, mojo, and muscle on their side, enough to rival the big dogs like the Yakuza and Mafia, even. Sometimes it pays to play along, and keep yourself on their good side.

A body can do worse than having the Ancients in his commlink’s speed dial, is what I’m saying.

Sure, they’re a little nuts. The all-elf gang, as crazy about their froo-froo fantasy crap as they are their motorcycles, adrenaline junkies one and all, just as likely to knife an ork or troll as look at ’em, a bunch of wannabe Robin Hoods who’ve somehow got half of Seattle all ga-ga over what rebellious bad-boys with hearts of gold they are…they’re not all there, and there’s no doubt about it. But underneath all the leather and chrome, take away the sneering elven supremacy and the gunrunning, and some of ’em—trust me, brother, just some of ’em—are halfway decent guys. What’s more, they’re not all a bunch of Tír-born fascists. Plenty of ’em came up on the same streets I did, and joined Puyallup’s biggest gang to try and give the place a little bit of law. There’s lots of local boys wearing the big, green A.

One of those halfway decent ones, as it turns out, happens to lead the gang nowadays. Belial, he calls himself, and he’s the Barrens-born bastard of Green Lucifer. Lucy was a real piece of work; he used to head up the crew back in the day, until he fucked off to I-don’t-really-caresville. Psycho. Major hard-on for the elfy stuff. Word is he’s running the whole west coast of their crew, but Seattle don’t really miss him. People feared him instead of respected him.

It was a gal named Sting, a proper Puyallup brat, born on, raised on, and hard as the streets, that kept Lucifer in check. Sting’s another old-timer, always tried to do right by the neighborhood, and lots of that looks like it rubbed off on the kid. I don’t know if he really buys the elven underdog schtick, looking out for the folks in this pointy-eared ghetto, or if he’s just faking it. If he’s faking it, though, he’s still going through the motions and doing a little good work.

More importantly, if there’s one outfit that runs the southern half of Puyallup, it’s these elves in black and green. I mostly work further north, closer to the rest of the Sprawl, they mostly stay south-side, closer to the highways that are a smuggler’s lifeline to Tír Tairngire. Our paths don’t cross real often, but a gig’s a gig, and they were offering one. 

Speaking of which? My job today had to do with the Ancients and another band of would-be elven Robin Hoods. Smugglers, too. All-elf, too. Tír-expatriates, too. The Laésa, they’re this more recent outfit. Elven mafia, basically. The shit hit the fan down in Elfy-Land, or rather the shit’s been hitting the fan on and off for a dozen years or so, see, and a whole bunch of Tír-born folks have been coming and going ever since, right? Including, or maybe especially, lots of criminals. Well, just about the most popular safe port for ’em is here, Puyallup. Specifically, the elven ghetto, Tarislar, down-district in the south. That’s long been Ancients’ turf, for that very reason.

So. Laésa, meet Ancients. Ancients, meet Laésa. Puyallup, meet trouble.

You can’t have two gangs with the same recruitment base, the same sales pitch, and the same penchant for fast bikes and recreational pharmaceuticals all hanging out right next to each other without expecting a little trouble. They compete over young recruits born here in the neighborhood, over starry-eyed wannabes from elsewhere in the Sprawl, over discontent expatriates roaming up from the Tír, and the cold-blooded politicians that hide spies among them. They compete over lucrative smuggling runs carrying Tír-only drugs and magical components, over the specialized mechanics who soup up their racing rigs, over groupies into pointy ears and youthful rebellion. They compete over damned near everything, the way only siblings can, and just like siblings sometimes things get a little too rowdy, a little too violent. Lately, Tarislar’s been running a little bloody. A bunch of kids who think they’ll live forever get together with swords, fast bikes, and an excuse to pick a fight, and it’s not like it’s a stretch for things to get nasty pretty quick.

That’s where I come in.

I’m just right. Elven enough that they trust me, ’cause I fit the requirement to be an Elder Judge Of The Grand Poobah Muckety-Muck Whatever, their so-called ancient traditions and metaracial purity mumbo-jumbo, but not so elven I’m competition, too. I don’t drink the same fancy wines they do, stick to their trendy vegetarian diet, hug trees, race motorcycles. I don’t speak the lingo or recite the poetry, I don’t give two tugs who’s calling themselves Princes down south in Tír Tairngire, and I’ve got no ties to any political faction these two bands of knuckleheads squabble over. I’m just elven enough to count, I’m always happy to keep a pair of syndicates off my back, and their nuyen spends as well as any other client’s does. 

Jimmy Kincaid, impartial judge to turf disputes, trying to keep ’em from getting bloody. That’s me. A chaperone.

The meet-up was at an old warehouse, torched a while back when some Halloweeners were a little more confident, abandoned as soon as the half-assed insurance investigator shrugged and stopped caring. Most of the roof was still there, more walls than not, but enough of the open sky was visible that their magical elfy hoopla would still be held under the stars and moon, or whatever it was they cared about. 

The place was normally pretty dead, but, man, it was hopping tonight. Ancients and Laésa kids were scattered everywhere, souped-up bikes out front, tricked-out engines howling, chrome flashing, brittle egos sharpening themselves by rubbing against one another. United by their non-conformity, both sides loved black leather and chrome, but there the cosmetic similarities stopped. I tweaked my monochrome filters to compensate, had a little fun with it, just picked up green while keeping everything else black and white.

The Laésa tended toward monochromatic outfits, anyway. They weren’t quite as uniform as a proper gang, but were fans of white, black, and all the shades of gray in between—who says they don’t fit in here in Puyallup, with our muddy morals and layers of ash everywhere?—while the Ancients were soaked in the acid green they loved—patches, mohawks, glo-strips, bio-tats, flashing bright as an intersection stoplight shouting go, go, go.

Young bravos did wheelies, stoppies, and who-knows-what-else on nimble little courier-quick bikes, while older toughs, sporting more scars and less smiles, leaned against heavier combat-ready road hogs, wearing less leather and more armor. The vacant lot, rain-slick and ash-slippery, was half-party and half-staredown, the two sides mingling, greens and grays, in a tornado of activity that circled the half-dead warehouse proper. A few prospects had hauled up a keg from somewhere, a few others were competing in augmented reality to DJ for the night, a couple sat down like arm wrestlers to sync up their hardware and get into hacker duels for fun.

Ariana oohed and aahed at the excitement in the air, already shaking off the darkness of the BTL-den’s astral shadow, her mood improved even further by the youth and confidence of the parking lot stunt-riders and their hangers-on. She drifted up through the roof and floated overhead, adding to the light show as she circled, spun, and clapped her hands. More than one pointy-eared mage noticed her, I can tell you that.

I rolled right up to the main warehouse entrance, in the center of the impromptu street carnival. My Ford was damn near the only car there, and I was almost late to the party, so I was gonna draw the eye either way; might as well get a good parking spot, right? Anyone who was anyone was on two wheels and had been there early, so I stuck out like a troll at a dwarf convention. I didn’t bother engaging the alarm system—if this crowd of smugglers and go-gangers wanted my wheels, they’d strip ’em down, security be damned—as I clambered out of my car and gave a leisurely stretch.

Ari stayed skyward and had some fun while I lit up a Target and headed toward the busted-off-the-rails loading door that served as a main entrance. Through our psychic link I felt her amusement, her awe at the fireworks, her joy at the raucous but energetic half-mob of young elves gathered around the place. The Ancients and Laésa both worked hard to make the people of Puyallup, especially of Tarislar, adore them. It was paying off tonight, with this gang meeting—hardly a secret, in a neighborhood like this—turning into the love child of a block party and a carnival. I let her have her fun, floating around and enjoying the all-too-rare positive vibes. Whatever made the kid happy made me…well…less unhappy, I guess.

Ariana wasn’t the only one enjoying herself, and being exuberant about it. A looming elf with a brilliant green mohawk waved as I sauntered up, nodding at him and trying my friendliest smile. Belial had been the chapter head of the Seattle Ancients for a couple years, and things were running pretty smoothly under him. He’d fought for the gang, fair and square, in some fancy elven challenge thing, wrestling the top spot away from Sting, who’d been a little more stand-offish. A half-dozen or so independent urban mercenaries—shadowrunners, y’know?—had dressed up like Ancients and done his work for the night, running some sort of race or scavenger hunt against Sting’s team. It had felt like half the district had been watching that challenge live, and you could still see spliced-together footage of his little gaggle of ‘champion’ shadowrunners running errands for him half the night, little security-drone movies touched up and distributed by Ancients hackers, adding to their rep. That was how Belial worked, though, inspiring that sort of nonsense, even from outsiders.

He was still just a kid—I wasn’t positive, but I pegged him at just about the twenty-five every elf looked—but he’d grown up here, and that counted for a lot in my book. He was all muscles and confidence; flashing white teeth, tan skin crawling with classic ink and nova-hot new bio-tats, chief among them a heraldic-style griffin on his chest. 

“Hoi, chummer! We were starting to worry you were gonna miss the party!”

His handshake was as strong as you’d expect from his linebacker build and general enthusiasm. Belial didn’t do things halfway. He had conviction and charisma, and those two could take a gang warlord pretty far. He also had magic. I’d assensed the kid a time or two before, and the power rolled off him in waves. A Mystic Adept, he was a rare sort who was a spell-slinger and who’d also internalized their power, augmenting themselves from within even while influencing the world around them. They didn’t grow on trees, and he was a solid specimen. Lots of strength, lots of boldness, youthful energy. I couldn’t quite peg his Mentor—his totem, like? Source of his magical power, I mean—but it was easy to guess it was a pretty up-front martial sort. Dragonslayer, probably, or Wolf. That sort of thing. Brave, bold, brash.

Not like his sidekick.

“It’s not a party.” A darker Ancient slipped out of Belial’s shadow, all black leather, black hair, black disposition. “He’s an employee, and one barely punctual to a job site.”

“Rook.” My nod was barely perceptible and entirely insincere. “Always a pleasure.”

Rook was a mage, too, but a more conventional one. Spellcasting and summoning, standard stuff like used to come so easily to me, and Tír-trained for combat mojo, according to rumors. I bristled a bit at his attitude, but bolstered my magical appearance out of habit; tweaking the look of my own aura, just in case he took a peek, projecting far more power than I had. It was an old trick, ridging up like an alley cat trying to look big, and one I was pretty good at.

Rook was powerful, his magic strong, despite the black-chromed cyberarm he sported, and would probably only respect similarly strong magic. Everyone knew he brought Tír connections aplenty with him, and I wondered how my fake aura—or my actual aura, before losing so much of my power—might’ve compared to some of his high-ranked pals back home. 

With that Tír upbringing and noble connections, though, came certain assumptions and attitudes that meant me and him butted heads. He was every bit the metaracial supremacist Belial wasn’t. Belial loved the Ancients and Tarislar, and that mostly meant he cared about elves. Rook loved himself and elvenkind, which mostly meant he happened to care about the Ancients and Tarislar. I’d heard talk of him being tangled up with some pretty radical Black Sun guys, but it was hard to find out that sort of thing for sure, and no one’d hired me to get to the bottom of it yet. He was definitely trouble. There was no mistaking a certain darkness ’round the eyes, something that told me his Mentor was a nasty piece of work, maybe even as dark as…well, let’s just say Rook wore menace like a fine silk suit.

I always kinda wondered how much of Rook’s loyalty was a matter of convenience instead of principle. Likewise, I wondered just how much worse things would get in Puyallup, even just down in Tarislar at the other end of the city, if we had to find out about his priorities the hard way.

Belial didn’t seem worried, though; Belial never seemed worried—that’d imply a lack of confidence about anything, ever. The bigger elf nearly knocked me down with an enthusiastic smack on the back, half-shoving me into the remains of the warehouse. He wasn’t dumb—Puyallup didn’t forgive stupidity, even when you weren’t trying to run the local chapter of an international go-gang—but he was simple. Honest. He came off as kind of a big lug, really, but one with the power and personality to pull it off.

I didn’t personally know any of the Laésa bosses in attendance, but that didn’t surprise me. The Ancients had set up shop in Seattle long ago. They lived here, worked here, partied here. They were a part of the Sprawl, acid green and mohawked, all youthful edge and brash sureness. The Laésa weren’t, didn’t want to be, weren’t interested. They were smugglers, yeah, and they recruited here, but that was about it. To the Laésa, Puyallup—hell, Seattle—was just a job. They ran stuff in and out, fueled up, and then just circled around to head back down I-5 to Portland for another go. Hell, half of ’em took a hit of that Tír Tairgire favorite of theirs, the drug that was their namesake, laes, all the time, so they barely remembered Tarislar, much less cared about it one way or the other. The drug immediately knocked folks out, wiped a couple hours’ of memories away, and was rare enough to be as expensive as all get out. 

All three were elves, natch; heads shaved high up on the sides, Laésa ink beneath bristling hair just growing back in, one pinged as magical and another sported some obvious chrome. Flip, their chrome-limbed razorgirl and leader, introduced herself, flanked by Jackknife—their adept—and hell if I caught the last one’s name. Something in Sperethiel, but my linguasoft didn’t keep up. Arrow-Star, it sounded like? I decided I didn’t really care what poetic elvish name he’d picked out for himself, and got on with my life. I wasn’t sold on street names to begin with, but folks who self-identify like they’re in a fantasy flick just leave this palooka cold.

I didn’t know ’em, and didn’t really want to, and I was pretty sure they felt the same about me. Luckily for both of us, I was here on a pretty ceremonial pretense. Elf? Check. Outsider? Check. That was all anyone really cared about. I didn’t have actual authority, I was just here to bear witness and collect a paycheck.

Belial and Rook were joined by a third Ancient I’d seen around the city before. Blitz, he called himself, and thanks to his big old Japanese sword and topknot, lots of the other locals called him Bushido. He was okay for an Ancient, also grew up here in Puyallup at least, both his folks’d been in the gang, instead of being a snooty Tír import like so many. He didn’t have any obvious hardware installed, and I didn’t sense a lick of magic to him.

Belial squared off against Flip, Rook glared at Jackknife, and that left Blitz and Arrow-Star, wingmen instead of real players, to give each other the hairy eyeball.

Lord, did these kids bicker.

Flip started in and Belial laughed out loud, Rook sneered, Jackknife looked like he was about to spit in the Tír-born elf’s face, Blitz glared, and just on and on and on. They chattered and bitched at each other, switching back and forth from English to Cityspeak to Sperethiel to all three, bastard-tongues all woven together and borrowing words—mostly curses—from whatever was handy and sounded mean.

My Transys headware and the linguasoft I’d slotted tried to keep up, helpfully scrolling translations across my field of view, but mostly I didn’t pay attention. It wasn’t words I was there for, it was actions. I’ve got some hot mods running and a pretty top-end bit of hardware implanted, and between various bits of data—watching for thermal spikes that mirrored regular blushes, my cyberoptics tagging the various weapons these gangers bristled with, low-range heartrate and blood pressure monitors, my PeopleWatcher software scanning for dilated pupils and the like—and my own experience, I just watched to make sure they were all pissed, but peaceful.

You spend enough time in a town like mine, you get to learn how it feels when violence is coming, same as some folks get a creak in their bones before a storm. Random Puyallup bullshit, someone chipped outta his head or just off his nutter, sure, that still blindsides you. But premeditated stuff? Gang hits, bounties on folks, the moment a staredown turns into a stabbing? You get a sense for that.

My dad had the same knack. Spent nearly his whole life working in prisons, and always had the feel for when the shit was gonna clog the damned fan. I’d picked up on it, too, but not until after Pop had died. In my intemperate youth, my magical Talent made me cocky. I hadn’t appreciated Dad’s hard work and Mom’s loss the right ways; I’d just been all about good grades, scholarships, praise for the quirk of genetics that’d given me my mojo. I hadn’t learned how to smell violence coming until too late, until I’d lost so much, until I’d had to make do with the leftovers of my old power. I’d learned the hard way, but I’d learned.

So it wasn’t coming tonight, not from these jokers. A half-dozen crabby elves, arguing over turf and trade rights, nattering like old ladies, complaining about who had what smuggling route first, bickering over the fair street price for their laes-laced goodies, complaining about undercutting the competition, tagging over signs, blaming each other for the incidental violence that came as a side-effect of their lifestyle choices. They were like a bunch of teenagers, fighting over who was taking someone to prom, I swear. Blitz’d cut up some Laésa guys who’d tried to work him over, Flip had put a couple slugs into an Ancient out alone one night, and back and forth they’d started to escalate, but tonight they were just complaining, airing grievances, they were genuinely here to try and put a stop to it. No. No, neither crew was about to really throw down. I didn’t have to worry.

Then I felt it. Sniffed it on the breeze, heard it, my violence-sense tingled, I dunno. A different sound came from out front, from the couple-dozen elves lounging, bragging, showing off and getting high. The bike noises changed, the laughter stopped, the madcap teenagers stopped howling at the moon and started squalling in pain and anger.

I felt Ariana’s first concerned tug on our mental link, and looked up to see her flying through a cut-short fireworks display, just before I heard the first chattering autofire.

The attack started almost quietly because they’d opened with axes and machetes and that sort of thing. They didn’t let loose with the guns and grenades until after their fast-charging assault crew got a couple scalps for themselves, standing over the dismembered corpses of a little knot of Laésa couriers. Say what you will about the Spikes—the all-troll gang, the one with the rabid hate-on for elves—but that was almost sneaky of them. Their idea of a sidearm was a combat shotgun, their version of a rifle was a squad automatic; they knew it would be anything but quiet once they went for their guns.

I felt my ally spirit change moods through our psychic tether as she watched that first wave of Laésa fall. Ariana was worried about her new ‘friends,’ then sad, then angry. Me, I skipped right to the last one. 

My Colt was out as the first trolls rushed straight for the warehouse in a ragged ‘v’ formation, a madman with an oversized, screaming chainsaw in the lead. Most of the Spikes were content to slaughter the work-a-day schmucks here in this elven ghetto, out for body count and body count alone. Some of their more manic members were trying to go big and take out their long-time rivals’ leadership; Belial was the biggest target in Seattle to these jokers, and, just my luck, me standing right next to him.

“Squire!” I heard the burly elf shout as I was lining up my sights, and saw a flicker of motion in the corner of my eyes as I started to unload. I poured three shots, four, five, into the chest of the oncoming Spike—why didn’t he even stop laughing?!—but I might as well’ve been trying to down a rhino with a pellet gun. Maybe it was bulk and dermal plating, maybe armor, maybe it was Kamikaze or some other combat drug, maybe he was an adept, maybe he was just a damned psycho, but there was no way my pistol was dropping this guy. 

Fine. Bullets weren’t gonna do it, so mojo it would have to. I heard Rook chanting in Sperethiel and saw power flashing from his eyes and hands, and followed suit. Lone Star tactical sorcery doctrine was simple where the larger metaspecies were concerned, and I figured the Tír Tairngire Peace Force—and don’t it say something about Elfyland, that they use ninja commando black ops combat mages as cops, not just soldiers?—had a similar rule; pour on the mana. Insulated clothes could protect you against magical lightning or fire, chem-treatments could help against summoned waves of acid, purely physical spells could be defended against through purely physical means, and the Spikes certainly had ‘purely physical’ at their disposal. The mental, however, a spiritual assault, a direct infusion of concentrated magical force, an attack aimed at the aura, not the body? 

Don’t get me wrong, I ain’t gonna hop on the Humanis bandwagon and pull an ‘all trogs are stupid’ card, but let’s just say that as a general tendency, they’re a lot tougher physically than mentally, yeah?

I kept my Colt handy, but my off-hand came up from my belt with my wand at the ready. Time slowed down a tick while I mustered up the power I’d need, while I fell inside myself almost like in the old days. I saw every casually-busted piece of wall tumbling through the air, counted the yellow teeth inside this big bastard’s face, saw the pointed ears he wore around his neck, my headware and Sideways and the strange attentive distortion that comes from casting, really casting, brought it all into stark detail. 

“Teloch,” I barked at him, wand leveled. Enochian was a trick up my sleeve. A street shaman I know calls the technique ‘achieving oneness with ancient traditions,’ when she recited her tribal tongue. Jerks like Rook liked to chant in Sperethiel, calling it channeling their innately elven sorcerous power. Back at U-Dub, professors had told us that the proper enunciation in Latin granted scientific precision to our casting. Different folks had different names for it, different theories for it, different tricks for it—and not all of ’em were languages, even—but we all agreed that it worked.

Centering, it’s called. “Death,” I’d said.

It worked. Maybe better’n any spell I’d cast in a long while, it worked.

The magic rolled from me, poured through me, seeped my own strength and turned it into a flickering bolt of pure mana crashing against the troll, plucking at the threads of his aura, his very self. Armor didn’t work. Dermal plating didn’t work. Sheer mass, laced bones, tough hide didn’t work. You just hurt.

The troll staggered and spat blood, yellow eyes going bloodshot and rolling mad in his head like a horse in an old Western trid.

A decade or two back, I’d’ve killed him with it. Hell, on most days I could’ve dropped him and all his buddies close by, just poured it on with a single casting, killed the lot of ’em and barely broken a sweat. Instead, I felt a wave of cold wash over me now, even after the single-target spell, my own life force having to fuel even the simplest of magics. 

I didn’t feel the pain that accompanied the overcasting ravaging my system—I couldn’t, my Sideways gene-treatment had seen to that—but my Corpsman biomonitor let me know about the nervous system disruption, my elevated heart rate, the spike in my blood pressure. 

“Thanks a lot.” I gritted my teeth and prepared to cast again. Stupid Corpsman. No shit, my blood pressure was up. The fuckin’ troll was still coming!

A ripple in reality soared away from a black cyberhand, single finger extended. The visible distortion, a wave of raw power, crashed into the troll without a sound, save the big ganger’s whoosh of stolen breath. Had I been watching on the astral plane—in full color, not the monochrome of my custom optics—I’d have seen his aura go ragged at the edges, then fray, then vanish as a string was tugged. In realspace, I just saw him bleed from every visible hole, cough out a spray of lung-bright redness, then fall over, dead.

“You’re welcome,” Rook said with a smug grin sharp as a beak, and for a second, as the magic flowed from him, I thought I heard a raven’s wings flapping. The little bastard made it look so easy behind that mentor’s spirit-mask.

“Wasn’t talking to you.” My jaw didn’t relax much as I growled out the words. Gotta give credit where it’s due, even when it tastes like crow. “But yeah. Fine.”

We stood back to back, then, and as his effortless spells and my barking Colt bought us some space, I took it all in from behind the front sight of my gun. The world was madness and chaos, but I didn’t see it like that. I didn’t see it like anybody else, in fact. In ascending order, my own personal cocktail of addictions and augmentations saw to that; my mild nicotine high, my habitual WhiteBrite™ betel gum, my Lone Star bought-and-paid-for headware, and that Sideways mutation, the hyper attention it brought, the inflexible, impossible attention to detail, the high-contrast fascination with every tiny little thing, all the world in slow motion, like a trideo show with a broken controller. When other people saw chaos, I saw detail.

So, yeah, it was a riot. A mad scramble of blood, sweat, gunfire, flashing blades, gang leathers, mohawks, scars, severed ears, elves and trolls in a crazy tangle. But I saw it all. In front of my cyberoptics, in the face of my gene-tweaked attention to detail, I caught every little thing. 

I couldn’t miss the gleam of chrome on the shoulder-spikes of Belial’s leather vest, the flash of his absurd claymore sword, the splash of trollish blood marring the gryphon tattoo on his chest. I saw Squire standing in Belial’s blood-soaked shadow, looking older, with a big Ruger wheelgun in both hands, lifting it in a proper stance just like I’d been taught before she was born, covering his flank with methodical, sure-eyed fire.  I recognized the Ares logo on the spent shell casings as they arced gracefully from Flip’s arm-mounted cyberguns while she fired away on full auto, counted each one as it hit the ground, predicted when her subguns would go dry based on model number and spec-sheet information that flooded into my Transys cranial computer without me consciously asking for it. I saw Jackknife fold like his namesake, impossibly broken, sideways, attacked by a Spike who swung a stop sign like a baseball bat, complete with a wad of concrete still clinging to the base and giving his impromptu mace that much more power. My headware did the math, timing the chipped-quick draw and swing of Bushido Blitz, seeing it in slow motion but so smooth and fast it looked realtime, and I saw the light glint just so off the monofilament edge of his combat katana before it took a Spike’s head off, snicker-snack, in a single swing.

A casual backhand snapped an Ancient’s neck and sent the skinny elven corpse flying, and I lined up my sights, my smartlink pip, and my red-hot instinct on her killer; the slide locked back on my Colt by the time the big troll slumped and fell to die. 

I cast a glance skyward instead of pulling out a fresh magazine. I wouldn’t need it.

“Ari,” I said, smiling despite the madness all around.

She swept out of the sky like a Valkyrie, face grim, heart set on killing. She was a good girl. A simple soul. All the best parts of me that I no longer had, normally bright and smiling, but even she had her limits, and wholesale slaughter was a sure way to rile her up. 

She fell onto the nearest knot of Spikes—all singed but whole after a wave of fire cast from Belial—and tore into them like a storm of shrapnel. Ariana wasn’t tied to any single element, not really, but she favored her home plane, earth. When angered, she was all flint, all obsidian, all steel talons and strong as a mountain. Two Spikes fell in bloody pieces before the third turned to attack her, and his point-blank shotgun blast ricocheted off like she was a bank vault door. She grabbed his horns and wrenched. His neck lost, for all his size and her lack of it, and he fell, dead.

“Ari,” I tapped Rook’s shoulder, nodding for him to watch. He quirked one black eyebrow in irritation, but I wanted him—especially him—to see just what she could do.

She flew, again. Rising, chrome-shining, to get a better vantage before she unleashed hell.

As surely as Rook and me, the kid knew basic tactical doctrine. Trolls. Mana spells. Direct astral assaults, mental attacks rather than physical. Pure power. Death, neat. 

She glared and pointed—like a schoolgirl chastising a puppy—and a Spike stumbled, bled, and fell beneath an Ancient’s gun. She scowled again, sent out another wave of power, and another Spike died. She thrust out both hands, pushing a blast of pure mana from her, and it exploded to kill a few at once. Her brow furrowed in concentration, tongue sticking out ruby-red between her lips as she focused, and they just started falling. Here and there and everywhere, one by one or in small clusters where no elves were near enough to be threatened by broader spells, she dropped them. 

“Ari,” I raised my voice, sent a tug through our mental link. 

She shook her fist—childlike, again—at the trolls as they turn to ran, but dropped through space to land near me. Rook had left during the show and started mending fallen elves, which, I’ll be honest, ticked him up a notch in my book.

“Good work, kiddo,” I said, and her smile lit up the darkness around us both. “But take it easy. I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

Strain was strain, drain was drain, casting was casting. She had a tremendous capacity for it, but if she overdid it, she could still be hurt, even killed, by slinging too much mojo, too fast.

“I knoooow,” she said, whining just a little, then that red lip stuck out in a pout. “But they were being mean, boss! To the elves!”

“That they were.” Belial’s sonorous voice came from nowhere, suddenly beside us, Squire reloading just behind him and eyeballing Ariana like she was a pop star. “But you sure did put a stop to it, girl.”

Her bronze-sheen deepened in a blush—a blush!—and she dug one toe into the earth like the girls in the Japanese cartoons she watched with Skip and Trace. Little Squire’s girlish awe turned to a scowl as pubescent jealousy reared up.

“Go help the elves, kiddo,” I gave Ariana’s shoulder a squeeze, and nodded to…to everywhere. There were so many hurt, so many dying. “You did real good. Go do some more, okay?”

“Yeah!” She was off like that, skipping on the air, eager to help, certain it would be enough. She had more than just my power. She had my optimism, my idealism, my charity.

She flew off, and I slumped against a nearby wall. Belial took a second to make sure no one but Squire and I would notice, then leaned just as heavily on his claymore’s crossguard. His shoulders were so big they seemed to let the world down when they slumped from exhaustion.

“Hell of a night,” he said, just before I could. 

“Hell of a night,” Flip said, one chrome arm gone below the elbow, leaking oil, but she didn’t seem to care. Belial had Squire, and Blitz and his dripping blade weren’t far off. Flip didn’t have a second or third anymore, and the few Laésa in sight were dead or being bandaged up, but she didn’t seem to care about that, either. 

She held out her good cyberhand.

“A deal done. Signed in blood. Allies again, against their ilk.”

Belial shook it, his huge hand dwarfing her chrome cyberdigits, but I couldn’t help but wonder who had more strength.

“Sielle,” he said, barely needing my headware to tell me he was agreeing with ‘it is the way of things.’

“Witnessed and done.” She nodded matter-of-factly, eyeballing me while she remembered Ariana. “Nice work, Mr. Kincaid. I don’t…I’m not sure how this would have gone without you here.”

I offered my own hand to shake.

“Friends call me Jimmy.”

Then we stood there, the three of us, a couple dark Ancients looming protectively in nearby shadows, and just enjoyed being tired and almost-whole together.

Belial left first, trusting Squire to struggle under his big sword, striding off to help with the healing. Flip left later, with Bushido Blitz walking on her weak side, gallant despite his ganger-swagger. I lit up a Target—with a lighter, the old-fashioned way, hell if that manabolt hadn’t taken the wind outta me—headed to my car, and just waited for Ariana to feel done helping.

I’ve got as much patience as she does compassion, as it turns out. She didn’t come over until every elf had either bled out or had some magical mending.

“You’re a good kid. I’m proud of you,” I said as I started up the Ford, dashboard coming to life.

Like always, her smile lit up the place brighter than the console. We drove home, my payment from the elves tucked away for now, both in my checking account and snug in my glove compartment. You just never knew when Tír smugglers and their illicit goods’d come in handy.

CHAPTER 3

My apartment wasn’t much, maybe, but it’d been home for the better part of a decade, and after a night of blood, bullets, and screaming, it was plenty cozy.

I shucked off my lined coat and suit, stripping down to my skivvies and an undershirt while I stretched out aches and a long day’s worth of stiffness. Ari hummed cheerily as she fluttered in my wake, picking up the clothes, then effortlessly cleaning and changing them—she liked different colors all the time—with little Fashion-manipulation spells. By the time I’d grabbed a beer and downed half of it on the way to my sheet-crumpled bed, she had my suit hanging neatly from the coat rack near the door, ready for me to wear whenever I got up.

“Computer, calendar me,” I said out loud even though I didn’t need to, my headware commlink humming out of standby mode to project onto my cyberoptics. 

Aw, dammit. The elf-troll tangle had kept me up later than I’d planned, and it was already—technically—early morning instead of late night. I had a noon expedition, and that meant not nearly long enough to sleep off the day’s gunfights and exhaustion.

“Dismissed.” I gave a jaunty little salute to my vanishing schedule with the beer bottle before swigging the last of it. Ari hovered around the apartment doing lots of nothing; I stretched out to sleep. 

Like most of the time, it wasn’t any good. Dreams came to me, bright and full of life, contrasting with the monochrome shades of old-movie reality I tried to wrap myself up in day to day. I remembered dreaming about my dad, the lantern-jawed old man, salt-and-pepper crew cut, perpetual frown, crow’s feet around his eyes because he never looked anywhere so much as squinted and glared. I dreamed about my mom, whose face I sometimes didn’t quite remember any more, gone these thirty years now, give or take. I dreamed about my youth, my promise, my squandered tomorrows that had turned into wasted yesterdays.

I dreamed about fangs in the dark. I dreamed about the claws of ghouls and the flashing yellow teeth of darker, older things. I dreamed about my own blood being torn from my throat, dreamed about my Talent being taken with it, dreamed about how damned hard it had been to muster up a proper spell in the years and years since.

I dreamed about Turbo Bunny and her curves and our chips, about Hard Exit and Lone Star throwing me away, about layers of ash that turned the whole world to shades of gray, inside and out. I dreamed about Ariana, flitting around with power I used to have, that I’d invested in her before having mine taken away, and about how sometimes instead of being proud of her, I was jealous that she still had it.

I woke up, eventually, to see the world in old-timey blacks and whites again, Ari tut-tutting in the kitchen, using Magic Fingers—for some reason—to stumble her way through cooking me breakfast. 

“Kiddo.” I said, trying to sound gentle instead of gravel-rough. “What’re you doing?”

“I’m not tou-ching thiiiiiings.” She beamed at me with her best little sly smile, which wasn’t really sly. She waggled her fingers at me in a little wave, and a pan of eggs wavered as her small telekinetic spell responded. Grease spattered a bit, and I shook my head.

“Yooooou said ‘I can take care of myself,’” her sing-song went dour and bass, her smile turned to a frown and a furrowed brow. “’Grr,’ you said, ‘I’m Mister Tough Guy Kincaid, I don’t want Ari making a mess in the kitchen. No touching the kitchen, Ari!’ was what you said. So I’m not!”

Her triumphant arm-flinging, a goal-score celebration she’d swiped from Urban Brawl or something, sent a half-gallon of soymilk flying off the counter on one side, knocked my little one-cup coffeemaker into the sink full of dishes with her other arm.

“Mmmmmmmagic fffffffffingers,” she proclaimed triumphantly, waving at me with the pan of sizzling eggs without touching it, as though I’d forgotten what the spell was, how it worked, or hadn’t already recogni—ahh, this friggin’ kid. 

“So I’m still cooking, but not touching anything! I’m following the rules, but still doing what I want, get it? Like you said!”

“Okay, Ari,” I shook my head again, laughing. “I’ll…thanks. I’m gonna shower. Breakfast looks great, have it ready when I’m done, okay?”

She giggled and twirled, as helpful as I was selfish, and went back to work on her culinary masterpiece. I cleaned up, considered a shave, decided—as I did about nine times out of ten—against it. Something was burning by the time I had my suit back on, and Ariana dove across the apartment to present me a plate of things-that-used-to-be-groceries as I settled into my desk. Things that weren’t raw were burned, and her eager attempts with the salt and pepper shakers had just made it worse. She looked at me, hopefully.

I ate it.

Because screw you, that’s what you do when a kid like Ari makes you breakfast. It doesn’t matter how tough you act to the rest of the world, being a man means letting a kid win at thumb wrestling, loving how your gal looks in any dress in the world, and eating what’s put in front of you by someone who means well and can’t cook. The world’s got rules, and some of ’em, even I follow.

I choked down the breakfast with a couple cups of joe, waking me up and washing out the ashy, salty flavor. I used the old touchscreen built into my desk to check a half-dozen different emails and a couple local news sites—it felt good to work at a desk, sometimes, instead of out of my own cranial implants—but nothing urgent came up that would let me duck today’s scheduled work. I had a few emails, a few follow-ups, a few bills coming overdue. I skimmed and skipped, not really paying attention. The Hermetic Order of the Auric Aurora wanted their dues, like they always did. An old professor—also an Order member—emailed me, probably to let me know dues were late. Skip and Trace had forwarded me some spam email about their favorite trid-show. Nothing good. Nothing that couldn’t wait, so it was time to go to work. Ari was still beaming and humming cheery tunes when we took off, across town, in my snarling, ugly Ford.

I had a job to do. A simple private investigator gig, the sort that put the runny eggs and charred bacon on my table and kept a roof over my head. Henry Archibald Weazely wasn’t a bad guy, but he’d been a pretty lousy husband, according to Darlene. Both were human, both were Puyallup kids grown up a few blocks from me, neither were real trouble or real treasure. Weazely worked for the city sanitation office, a maintenance drone-jockey for Eta Engineering, and he’d invested a few too many paychecks in the ponies for his ex-wife’s liking. Sounded like their tumultuous relationship, unsteady since high school, was rocky again. He was backed up on alimony, she came to me and offered my usual rate if I got him to cough it up, and so here I was, hitting the bricks.

I visited a couple of likely spots, putting forth a good faith effort at getting my name and face out there. If I know anything, I know Puyallup. I know the people here, and most of them know me right back. They know I ain’t a cop. They know if I’m after someone, it’s either not serious enough for the cops to get involved, or it’s serious enough the cops don’t want a piece of it. They know I play fair. They know I do what I can to help. They know I give the guys I’m after a fair shake, depending on why I’m after ’em, and they know the sort of favors I carry, the sort of favors I offer, for decent data. Puyallup has a dozen places to look for a guy like Hank Weazely, and I’ve been into all of ’em. I’ve backed up the bouncers when they’ve needed it, figured out who was ripping off the owner after hours when they’ve called me, helped the waitresses with kids in trouble or boyfriends who needed a talking-to, or sometimes more.

I’ve got a name in Puyallup. Weazely? Weazely’s got debts.

He wasn’t an idiot. He drank a little too much and he had the pony fever, bad, but he wasn’t born stupid. Booze made him dumb, betting made him dumber. I quirked an eyebrow when a bookie told me how much Weazely owed—owed big names in this city—and I shook my head when I got it confirmed by Georgia, a Gianelli soldier who owed me a favor. 

Great. So I didn’t just have to find him, I had to find him first. You start getting into five-digit debts with people like the Gianelli family, and suddenly you’ve got a lot more to worry about than an angry ex-wife.

It didn’t take me long to trade my name for his debts, to get a couple of likely folks to point me in a couple of likely directions. I’d given myself until noon to go looking for him ’cause I knew he got off his swingy night-shift late, and would be out and about, himself, late morning and early afternoon. I knew enough of his habits to know where to go tracking him, and I knew enough folks in this city to make tracking him easy.

Which brings me to Pornutopia. Despite the sign, gentlemen didn’t come to the Pornutopia Gentleman’s Club, surprise surprise. It did not offer a particularly clean establishment, or the sort of environment gentlemen were normally found in, no. What it did offer was a wide range of dames from an assortment of metaracial backgrounds, both real and digital for the chip-slotting crowd. Pornutopia offered a breakfast buffet that ran twenty-four seven. Pornutopia offered bookies and live trid coverage of horse races and other sporting events that ran whenever the breakfast buffet did.

Pornutopia offered me the Hank Weazely motherlode. He was a simple guy who’d just gotten off work on a payday. Boobs, bacon, and betting. This was Weazely’s kind of place.

I’d called ahead on my way over, talked to Petey Left-Eye, the day manager. Petey’d talked to Three-Tusk out front, and when I parked the Ford and headed for the door, the big orkish bouncer just nodded me through; he knew I was here for work, not sight-seeing, and waived the cover. 

I still stopped by the bar and grabbed a drink, though. It wasn’t the tits I was here to look for, or even the wilting breakfast buffet. 

“Whiskey. Neat. Whatever you got.”

The bottle-jockey got to work and I scanned the bottles behind him, or rather the mirrored wall just behind the bottles. My Lone Star facial recognition protocols ran, top-end cyberoptics automatically compensating for the bar’s dimness, the distracting light effects around the dancers, the augmented reality overlay that tried to hide a few scars, a few stretch marks, a few second-rate implant marks. I fought against my detail-obsessed Sideways gene-treatment, dragged my data-starved attention away from the clear target, the dancers, and started scanning the customers.

I slid the bartender a rumpled Aztechnology ten-nuyen bill for the drink and waved away any change. Downing the whiskey—less peaty than I was used to, smooth, maybe something Japanese—in one gulp, I held up the shot glass and adjusted the zoom on my optics, angling the glass to scan different parts of the club. 

“And there…we…go,” I said to no one in particular; the bartender had wandered away, and Ari was on the Astral, invisible, hovering protectively over the sad-looking waffles at the far end of the buffet line.

I slapped the empty shot glass down and turned on the rickety stool, grinning from ear to ear because there—not huddled against the gambling machines, where I’d figured to find him—was ol’ Hank, sitting by himself in a corner booth near the back. He had his head down the way a loser sometimes did. My headware told me about recent races, and I figured that explained away the assortment of empty glasses in front of him, with just one or two still full. 

He was drinking away fear, or trying to.

“Weazely!” I gave him a big smile as I strode over, arms up like I was about to give him a hug.

“Weazely,” he whined, correcting the pronunciation in a way that never made him seem less weaselly. Hank was an unfortunate-looking soul; a little bug-eyed, a little rat-skinny, and with an overbite that didn’t do him any favors in the nickname department.

His defiance ended with the pronunciation proclamation, though; he wasn’t running, and that was a good start.

I settled in next to him, keeping my body between him and the aisle, between him and the doorway beyond. He just shrunk away, turning to put his back to the wall and his face to me.

“What do you want, Jimmy?”

“Money, Hank. Money.”

“Get in line!”

“I’m the first one here. Everyone else lines up behind me.”

“Behind Enzo Gianelli, you mean,” he sniffed, indignant.

It was my turn to be offended.

“You think I’m working for Enzo?”

“Well, yeah, I mean—”

“You think I’m collecting for the fucking Gianellis, Hank?”

“Then…who?”

“Christ, man. I’m here from your old lady. I’m not so hard-up I gotta take straight muscle work from…Hank, seriously. That hurts my feelings.”

I gave him a wounded look, Ari materializing opposite us in the booth, her magical tones subdued, making herself look just like a normal elven woman, and one—thankfully—more clothed than the dancers and drink-girls elsewhere in Pornutopia. She fought a giggle, knowing I was playing a trick on Hank, but not really understanding lies.

“You know what’d make me feel better, Hank?”

“Money.”

“Gold star! I don’t take Enzo’s money for breaking legs, Weazely, but I am collecting an honest paycheck from Darlene. She wants her alimony, I want my cut, you want me to leave you alone.”

“But I don’t have the—”

“You want me to leave you alone and not call Enzo right now on the supercomputer built into my damned face.” I cut him off, looping an elven-long arm around him, dragging him next to me in an affectionate half-hug that could be passed off as a headlock. My voice dropped, taking on darker undertones. “You don’t want me to hold you right here in this booth until Enzo and a few of his guys show up, so that I take their finder’s fee—you know me an’ Enzo go back, you know I could talk him up to a good twenty, maybe twenty-five percent, just on principle—and I collect about four times what Darlene’s offering me.”

“You know me, Weazely. You know that I know how much you owe. I know you threw your whole paycheck on Kobayashi Maru because you thought there was no way any other pony could win. I know you don’t have the money right now, for me or for Enzo, but I know you’d much rather make a deal with me than try to do the same with Enzo fucking Gianelli, right?”

I let him go, looked at him straight in the eyes.

“So, you give me something good. Something I can use, right now. Something worth the hassle of tracking you down, something worth the trouble of me talking to Enzo for you, and something worth Darlene yelling my ear off.”

I scooped up his last full glass, threw it back and looked pointedly toward the door. Gin. Particularly ginny, not my favorite, but it was a free drink and the principle of the thing.

“You give me something I can use, Hank, or we both sit here until a couple Gianelli boys show up.”

CHAPTER 4

It wasn’t great, what Weazely’d given me.

He let me know someone had shot up Tinman’s BTL joint yesterday, and that there might be trouble. He told me about a sure thing—like I’d ever believe him about the friggin’ horses—in a couple upcoming bets. He promised me anything he could ever do from his swing-shift manager position working for city sanitation at Eta. He swore he and Darlene would name their next son after me, or daughter after my sainted mother. He spilled about some office gossip he’d heard, about other gamblers he knew, just in case I wanted to throw them under the bus that was Enzo Gianelli to buy some time. He sang about a district councilman who was a regular at Pornutopia, cheating on his wife.

It wasn’t great, but it was enough. Favor for favor was the law of the land, and he was giving me enough to work with that I could call it worth my time.

Hank Weazely was on a bad track, and he was fixing to end up in a bad place because of it, but hell if I was gonna be the one to serve him up to the Gianellis. He didn’t have the money, so Darlene was gonna have to squeeze blood from a different stone, but I still felt invested. I didn’t have any other hits on my radar, so I headed across town to talk to Enzo. By now word had probably reached him that I was looking for Hank, and word might have even reached him that I’d found him; best to confront the issue head on, be honest. He’d respect that.

When I said hi at the door, his bouncer—the orkish one, rippling with slabs of implanted muscles that made him look like a freakish comic book superhero squeezed into a nice suit vest—punched me in the stomach so hard I threw up on his shoes. I called it a victory, since the Sideways meant I didn’t hurt from it, and since his shoes at least claimed to be Italian leather, and must’ve cost a bundle.

Ari scratched at the walls between the Astral plane and ours, but I spat out a mouthful of half-digested, burned breakfast and waved her away.

Enzo’s human bouncer got in a lick or two, but I was ready and rolled with them. I mostly focused on making sure my hat didn’t fall clean off, holding it on while I took a couple hits. I didn’t put up a real guard, didn’t let myself really fight back, just took the swings as the price of doing business. I let ’em think they hurt me more than they did—more than they could—and then I made ’em work to get me inside, dragging my feet, making them carry me as much as drag me, laughing on the inside as I heard the ork bitch about the puke in his shoe.

Hey, in this business, I take my wins where I can get ’em.

The pair hauled me into Sunny Salvo’s like I was a bad kid ducking my birthday party. Salvo’s was an old neighborhood icon, an anchor of the community, a terrible pizza joint full of arcade games and ancient animatronic cartoon-robot-animal things, all bright lights and overpriced soda, worthless toys paid for by hard-earned tokens, that sort of thing. Sunny Salvo’d been around since me and Enzo grew up together in this very neighborhood, but Enzo Gianelli, nephew to the Seattle Don and the real power behind the family name, had moved into the place and used it as his base of operation for years.

I sat my hat on the table like I’d just been invited over for an early dinner.

“Hi, Enzo,” I reached into a coat pocket—mostly to make his boys jumpy—and fished out a crumpled pack of Targets.

“Don’t you smoke in my joint.” Enzo’s chair was bigger than mine, making him look a little taller. He leaned forward, trying to play it up. “This place is for kids. No smoking.”

I rolled my eyes and put the pack away again. Kids. Right. His, and his army of nieces and nephews and stuff, maybe, but it was hardly a neighborhood joint suitable for family fun, not since the Mafia’d moved in.

“And don’t you ‘hi, Enzo’ me anyway, you prick.” He crossed his arms, forearms veiny from stress and brawn, pinkie rings glinting, the same gold flashing from a series of chains around his neck, tangled in his wooly chest hair, a button or two too many undone on his gaudy silk shirt.

“I’m a Capo now, dammit. A Capo, you understand me? Who the hell do you think you are, Jimmy, doing what you do, then showing up at my place?”

I dabbed at my split lip with a few napkins, giving him a genuine shrug. Maybe I’d actually pushed him too hard lately.

“What’re you pissed about this time, Enzo?”

“What am I…you! The lip on you, Jimmy. That’s what I mean! There’s no respect in you! ‘This time,’ he says! ‘This time,’ because he can’t keep straight the shit I’m mad at him over!”

He wasn’t just ranting to his no-necked doormen, who still flanked me and loomed from behind. His mage was there, too. A pimply-faced punk from the Order of Merlyn. They’d been a street gang a couple decades ago, a wizzer pack, all mages and mage-wannabes for muscle. Over time, they’d been folded into the Finnigan family, who ran the Seattle mob. Enzo here had finally ranked his very own magical advisor, and he’d gotten…

“Uranus, that’s right,” I cut in, talking to myself as much as anyone else. The kid had a scraggly little patch of hair on his chin, hair thinner than Enzo’s, shoulders skinnier than Ariana’s beneath trying-too-hard all black. “How’s biz, kid?”

They all took grandiose names, Merlyns. His hadn’t come with a whole lot of dignity attached. He didn’t answer, just sneered at me.

“Hey! You talk to me, Jimmy, not him. Not my doorman, not my men—yeah, I know Georgie and you had a phone call this morning—you talk to me. Capo Enzo Fucking Gianelli.”

“Okay, so talk, Enzo. What’s on your mind?”

My headware rumbled, tracking medical data about Enzo across my field of vision. He’d been a Novacoke-noser for years, now, and had gotten worse. He’d lost weight from it, looked fitter but less healthy, if you get the distinction. All muscle and energy, now, no smoothing, soothing Italian layer of fat to him any more. No calm. No stillness. 

“I’m tired of it, Jimmy. Tired of you. Poking your whole private dick routine into my business, into my uncle’s business. That whole mess with the Sleeping Tiger,” he started.

Yeah, I figured he’d be mad about that. I’d promised him a torched Yakuza sex-den, and a bunch of new working girls poached from the Kenran-Kai, his rival family in the district. He hadn’t quite gotten all of that. Or, uh, any of that.

“And don’t think I forgot about those guys of mine you killed. Paulie and Gino weren’t straight, but they were solid earners.”

I’d killed them—well, Ari and I had—because they’d been kidnapping folks on the side, and not cutting Enzo in. He hadn’t been mad about it at the time, really. I guess it made the laundry list now, though.

“And you might not know it, Jimmy, but I got people at the Spirit Focus. I know about your deal with Toe-mee-zaw-wah. Yeah, that’s right. Ol’ Enzo’s got ears everywhere, pal.”

Tomizawa was Enzo’s opposite, and not just because he ran the local Yakuza. He was older. Smarter. Scarier. He and I had made a deal, and we’d done so, yup, at my favorite joint, the Spirit Focus. It was a nice bar. Tomizawa appreciated the jazz, I appreciated his compromise. Everyone won. Except Enzo, who was apparently still sore about it.

One of his big beefeater doormen put a hand on my shoulder, like I was about to try and scramble out of my chair.

“And last but certainly not least, Jimmy, now I’ve got you jerkin’ me around about Hank friggin’ Weazely, and money he owes me. Lots of money.”

I made a face and tried to shrug—no doin’, it must’ve been the ork that had a paw on my shoulder—like it was no big deal.

“Weazely ain’t bad, and I got a case. A legit one. On the books, PI work. I found him first, and lo, let finders keepers be the law of the land.”

“You sound ridiculous,” Uranus snorted at me.

“No, Jimmy. No! He owes me. I don’t care who hired you, I don’t care why. He borrowed, he bet, he lost. He’s due. He’s overdue. I know you found him at Pornutopia—”

“That sounds ridiculous,” I snorted at him.

“I know you found him there, Jimmy, but you didn’t call me. You know you’re supposed to. You know it’s my neighborhood, you know he owes me, you know people who find people call me.”

“‘Your’ neighborhood?”

I didn’t snort this time, wasn’t being funny. My voice was a little lower, my jawline a little more set.

“This isn’t your neighborhood, Enzo. I’ve lived here longer, I didn’t move here ’cause my dad got pinched, didn’t move away again first chance I got. This is my home, man. I go outside and walk it. Puyallup ain’t fucking yours, and it ain’t just ’cause the Yaks are taking it from you. ‘Your neighborhood,’ Jesus. You work out of a pizza dive with a robot and augmented-reality cartoon sun, Enzo. You ain’t your uncle. You’re never gonna be. And this neighborhood isn’t yours.”

The hand on my shoulder had receded, like the ork was worried about getting hit in whatever thunderbolt from on high was about to strike me down.

“That’s the thing, Jimmy,” Enzo’s voice was soft and mean, the last wave of self-control only just barely keeping him under wraps. “That’s the thing that pisses me off. The disrespect of you. The contempt.”

“Don’t be so contemptible, then, and I’ll sto—”

A big fist cut me off, and while the Sideways meant it didn’t hurt, I saw stars for a second. Ariana whined to come help. 

“No,” I said out loud, even though I knew the mental command was enough to force her obedience.

“Yes, Jimmy,” Enzo said, giving me his darkest scowl. “I’m sick of it. The insults, the little jabs, you thinking you’re so damned clever. I remember you making fun of Uranus, too.”

Since I might’ve been about to get shot in the head, I managed not to snicker. Man, was my day turning sour.

“And the Order of Merlyn, loyal allies to the Gianelli family here in Seattle—” Enzo sat up a little straighter, trying to sound official. I can’t take anyone with pinkie rings seriously, though. “—has reason to take offense that that.”

“Hermeta Auric Order of the Aurora member, I challenge thee!”

Uranus loomed from the shadows, pointing at me like he was about to cast Finger of Death or something.

“What?” I blinked.

“I mean, I mean, Hermetic Aurora Order of the Aura member, I chall—”

“Enzo, are you kiddin’ me with this?” I gave the kid’s boss an incredulous look.

“You know what I mean!” Uranus shrieked, a little spittle flying.

“Listen, kid, I pay my dues to them, sure.” Sometimes. “But I don’t care about some wizard beef, okay? Ease up. The sorting hat says we gotta be enemies, whatever, but don’t try to poison your boss against me over some silly—“

“Do it, Jimmy.” Enzo was dead serious. He must’ve noticed how much of the heavy lifting Ariana did, must’ve decided to test the waters a little bit. He wanted this, wanted to see what I could do. My PeopleWatcher headware ran medical diagnostics on him, checked pupil dilation, heart rate, blood pressure, the full scan. He was serious, and he wasn’t even high. Just angry. Just honest. “You fight this duel thing. This…whatever you wizards do. You do it, I let you out of here.”

“I do it, you halve Hank’s debt, and you gimme twelve hundred nuyen. A grand for his old lady to cover her groceries for a bit, two hundred for me and my trouble.”

“I…” He blinked. “The fuckin’ balls on you, Jimmy.”

“I’ll fight your little wiz-kid here, sure. I’ll pretend to give a damn about my reputation in the magical community, I’ll respond all formal-like to this challenge bullshit, I’ll let you throw him at me to express your grand family displeasure. Whatever. But you know the old saw, Enzo. If you’re good at something, never do it for free. So I ain’t. I’m getting paid.”

“You lose this thing, you might die.”

“I won’t. And if I do, you still cut the debt in half, and you pay Darlene Weazely all twelve hundred.”

“You’re a psycho.”

He didn’t know the half of it.

CHAPTER 5

“I am Uranus. Son of the Order of Merlyn, Initiate of the Second Grade.” He sneered a little, like I was supposed to be impressed. I’ll be honest, though, on the Astral he glowed a lot brighter’n me. “I am a master of the Hermetic arts, trained in the methods of Centering and Divination.”

Why the hell did Enzo never seem to know what was going on, then? His personal Gandalf was supposed to be a diviner, and they still hung out in—ah, whatever. Fine.

I stood before him out in the swirling ash of Sunny Salvo’s parking lot, listening to his formal incantation of rank and ability, stuck in a circle with him that Enzo’s goons had carefully paced off, then dragged their shoes to mark. The Merlyns’d moved up in the world since just being a little mage-mischief gang, I’ll give ’em that. It was all very impressive.

“I name as my second my patron, Enzo Gianelli! Honored member of the syndicate that rightfully claims this ground, he stands witness to my deeds this day.” There was no formal mention of the pair of broad-shouldered thugs, of course, with the guns in their hands and all that.

“In the name of the Order of Merlyn and of Saturn, our ranking lord, I challenge you!”

I tossed my head and gave a mental nod to go with it, and Ariana rippled into existence. Uranus didn’t blink, didn’t flinch. He was stupid, then. I could’ve had her kill…well…probably not just him, really. All of ’em. Easily.

“I am James Kincaid. Member in good standing of the Hermetic Order of the Auric Aurora.” Sort of. I hadn’t really done anything but swear an initial oath and carry a membership card in all my years of membership, but who’s counting? 

“Initiate of the Fifth Grade.”

Now he blinked. That’s right, asshole.

“Master of the Arts.” Mine was an actual title, so suck on that, kid. “Trained at the University of Washington, Practical Hermetic Studies, Lone Star Tactical Sorcery courses, and specialized in the Apotropaic Arts. I am accomplished in the techniques of Centering, Masking, Shielding, Absorption, and Reflection.”

I didn’t lie. Not about things like this. I really was somebody, back in the day. Back before the fangs and the shadows and the gaping, black wound where my personal batteries used to be.

“I call as my second Ariana. Ally Spirit.” And thesis. Thankfully, she took on something of the grim seriousness of the scene and didn’t, I dunno, curtsey or go shake hands or anything. She just let her aura do its thing. Uranus could sense her power, even if mine was so diminished he thought he could take me.

“In the name of getting this over with, I accept your challenge.”

Then I stood there. He was nervous—he was smart enough to be—and almost cringed, expecting me to go on the offensive.

I didn’t. I didn’t have to. 

Here’s the thing about my stolen power, about the way I’d diminished it—strategically, at first—with carefully selected and minimally invasive augmentions on Lone Star’s dime, about the way my Talent had then been basically ripped to shreds, my sense of self torn out of me by a dirty, stinking vampire while I was at my peak; I didn’t forget a damned thing. When I was in a down mood I was constantly tortured by the memory of my power and angsting about how I’d never be that strong again, and blah blah blah, sure. But, hey, I didn’t forget my old tricks, either. I was somebody. I was on the fast track. I was off the charts. I was trained by some of Seattle’s best and brightest, and I’d earned those initiate grades through hard work.

Uranus here, he was an up-jumped punk from somewhere across town, still reading LaVey and feeling evil in a little, ratlike way. He’d killed, I was sure. You didn’t work for the Finnigans and the Gianellis without that under your belt. He had some talent, maybe, yeah. But he wasn’t me. He couldn’t do what I could do, and I’d just rubbed his nose in that in front of his boss.

When I didn’t hit first, he lashed out, frantic to try and beat me while he could.

He couldn’t.

Uranus snapped up his wand and barked out some Latin—always Latin, with these guys—and send a flashing bolt of lightning spearing toward me.

I whipped my wand out like a gunslinger, kept it waste high, and just said “Ag” in a voice not quite my own. It was Enochian for no. It was a warding word, a simple little monosyllabic smackdown.

His lightning bolt fizzled to nothingness, leaving the tip of his wand smoldering.

I’d lost my mojo, sure. Ol’ Jimmy Kincaid wasn’t knocking ’em dead with combat spells any more, right. But stopping magic, it’s a whole different animal than casting it yourself. It’s about the ties to the Astral, it’s about technique, it’s about deflection, finesse, not power. Jimmy doesn’t kill folks with combat magic, but combat magic doesn’t kill Jimmy, either.

He tried again, this time one of those direct mana spells, a ball of pure force, a bolt of pure killing power.

“Ag.”

A second one, bigger this time. He took longer to cast it, chanted louder in Latin, gestured more grandiosely with his wand. It was a visible light, this one, not just a ripple in the air.

“Ag.”

Uranus gritted his teeth, roared, sent a stream of fire blasting at me; my cyberoptics picked up Enzo and his thugs backing up a pace or two apiece, Gianelli lifting a hand to ward off the heat from his face.

“Ag,” I said, barely even a whisper, and the flames winked away before they got near me.

Another chant, more Latin, more casting, more glowing wand—this time I recognized the spell as it came toward me, a sickly-green wave of sludge that, if it connected, would turn me into more of the same—as Uranus kept trying. He’d pulled out all the stops; that sort of physical-target spell, so grand a manipulation of the real world, was pretty potent stuff.

“Ag.”

Another swing, another miss.

Uranus panted, wand wavering. I just stood there, a little Puyallup dust settling onto my shoulders. He stopped attacking me, figured a return assault had to be inevitable, started trying to think tactically. A little ripple washed over him, then a steady glow. Defensive spells, like the ones Ariana’d upkept on me in Tinman’s place. Armor, wards against danger, that sort of thing. He held onto them, clung to them, wrapped himself in them even as he sustained the enchantments. 

Then, bolstered, another offensive spell. This one was a purplish blast, a bolt of power somewhere between a pure mana attack and an elementally-grounded assault. It was weaker than the earlier ones, harder for him to cast after so many other channelings, all while maintaining his own defenses.

“Ag,” I said, baring my teeth in a nasty smile.

That one I channeled into myself, didn’t just dissipate harmlessly. Instead of rolling off me like water off a duck’s back, I internalized it, held it for a second, and threw it back at him. He staggered backwards from the blast, his own protections only just barely holding up.

“Kid.” I held up my free hand, wand still at the ready. “Kid, we’re good. Your boss saw your light show. You gave it a go. You proved your point, I proved mine. You maybe want to cut this out now, yeah?”

Uranus’ shoulders slumped, one hand drifted to his knees, breathing heavy, bent to steady himself like a tired out runner after a marathon haul. There were bags under his eyes, and one was bright red like he’d gotten jabbed in it. Bruises formed all across his face like he’d taken punches, visible on his acne-scarred skin. A little blood, dark and glossy, dripped from a self-induced nosebleed. 

He shook his head.

Uranus held his wand up again, like it weighed a ton, in a shaky two-handed grip. He had salt, I’ll give him that.

“Ag,” I grunted as I crossed the distance, then just kicked him in the same instant I snuffed out whatever new spell he’d been about to cast at me. 

It was a brutally simple front kick, straight on, the sort that I used to break down doors right before busting into a joint to shoot people. I shifted my grip on my wand as all the air left him and he jackknifed around the foot in his belly, doubled over and gasping.

I used my power focus like a fistload, pure and simple—just a kid with a roll of quarters in his hand—and I beat the hell out of him. Nothing artful, nothing fancy, just a punch, then another, then another, until he went down. Then I straddled him, knees in the Puyallup grit, and kept hitting until Enzo shouted for me to stop; Uranus’ second, officially ending the high-and-mighty magical duel.

My knuckles were split wide open, my Corpsman let me know I’d hurt myself, and I panted as I stood up. My eyes were low and angry, teeth still set, bloody hand still on my wand, as I glared Enzo’s way. 

Ariana clapped and spun a somersault in the air. Enzo’s men shifted their grips on their guns, not sure if they were supposed to murder me or—ah, mundanes—if they could. Uranus groaned, spat out a tooth, likely not the first one this parking lot had seen.

I looked at Enzo, my wand still in my hand, warm from the channeled magic, dangerous and ready. He didn’t need to know how little I could use it to attack, didn’t need to understand the theories behind what I’d just done, the technical prowess I’d shown without really being able to back it up with any offense of my own. He just had to know I’d beaten his mage, and he just had to wonder what I could do to him if he pushed me too hard.

“Enough?” My voice was low, uglier than I’d meant it. I didn’t mind.

His finger twitched, index on his right hand, his shooting hand. His trigger finger kind of wanted me dead, but his big wheelgun was still tucked in the front of his pants. The rest of him didn’t want to kill me, not really. We’d grown up together. We knew each other. I knew him, and knew what he couldn’t do. He knew me, and knew what I could. I was too useful to have around, too much a part of the city, too unpredictable, like I’d just shown him.

“Enough! Two grand,” he said, tossing his head and forcing a smile like the whole thing had been a joke. “A show like that, my friend Jimmy Kincaid gets more than twelve hundred nuyen, huh?! I’ll take the difference out of this pezzo di merda’s pay, yeah?”

“Nope. Just twelve,” I shook my head and stuffed my wand back into its holster, a nylon flashlight holder. “We agreed on twelve hundred, and Uranus ain’t to blame. He’s got potential, and he’s got balls. Don’t blame the kid, it’s not his fault I beat him. At least he tried.”

Enzo came at me—finally stepping into the circle after he was sure it wouldn’t kill him, Uranus had made it all look like a ritual, but Enzo didn’t know it really was just a mashed-down circle in an ugly parking lot—and wrapped me in a big bear hug. Ari fluttered in close, following the behavior shown by the humans around her, and started to pour a little mojo into my hand. It itched as it healed.

Enzo clapped me on the shoulder like he was proud of me.

“Not his fault? Not his fault?! Hah! Jimmy, Jimmy, you’re just that good, eh?”

“Yeah, Enzo. I’m just that good.”

Something like that.

CHAPTER 6

I was so good I had to call Hank Weazely and tell him to stop hiding on his friend’s futon, so good I had to call his on-again, off-again wife Darlene and start the nuyen transfer. She still tried to pay me from the grand I got her, but I waved her off.

“I didn’t get the money from Hank. I didn’t finish the job you hired me for. You just take the money, feed the kids, pay the rent, whatever. You don’t pay me, I don’t get that percentage we talked about, ’cause I didn’t do the job, okay?”

“You’re a good man, Jimmy K. You come over here and have some dinner with us and the kids some time, okay? You’re a good man. Everyone knows.”

I killed the call instead of correcting her. I drove, headed toward the apartment to unwind, maybe down a few beers, maybe crack open a bottle of something stronger. Between the day’s profits and the pay from last night, I had things covered financially for a few weeks. I could take it easy, grab a nap, then hit the nighttime streets to follow up on a few older cases, no big rush.

Then the phone rang, because that’s how the universe works.

“Darlene, I mean it, keep the money, okay? I’m good. Hell, I’m feeling kind of flush, all right?”

“Mr. Kincaid.”

My Ford nearly swerved off the road when I saw the caller identification pop-up. It wasn’t Darlene Weazely. It was the Hermetic Order of the Auric Aurora office.

Shit.

“Yeah, listen, I, uhh, I can get you those late dues, turns out.” There went my little bonus cash. What was it, two hundred a month, right? How many months behind was I?

“This isn’t about that, Mr. Kincaid.” The caller ID just showed the office number, but I knew that voice even before I got the car back under control and got a good glance at the screen. It was Dr. Reynolds, an old professor of mine, and maybe the number three, number four guy in the Order.

“It’s about Christopher, Mr. Kincaid. Dr. Minirth. He’s dead.”

I didn’t answer right away, just sent mental commands to check traffic, cross-reference with local crime reports for street violence that might slow me down. Then I swerved wide, spun the wheel, and turned the Ford around, right then and there, across a couple lanes of traffic.

“I’m on my way.”

I didn’t go to the main Order house, over by Pacific. I hadn’t been there since getting sworn in. I went to Dr. Reynolds’ place, just down the street from U-Dub. It took me a while to get there, the city center being a good bit out of my usual stomping ground, but I didn’t question, didn’t think about not going.

Chris Minirth. He’d been the one who taught me the most, easily. Half the techniques I’d used to deflect and absorb Uranus’ spells had been things I’d learned in his class. He’d been my favorite professor by a long shot, the one who wanted us to learn, wanted us to learn how to learn, wanted us to never forget how important our skills were, how amazing it was we could do what we could do. He was a straight-arrow Hermetic, like all the rest—good luck getting most shamans to settle down, even in the sometimes hands-off world of academia and tenured positions—but he’d always treated what we did like an art, not a science. He’d always kept magic…magical.

The drive gave me time to pull up news reports, my Transys humming away, not knowing or caring that the files I was accessing weren’t for a case, they were me reading about a dead friend, teacher, and mentor. Natural causes, it said. I knew before I slewed my Ford to a stop outside Reynolds’ place that something was wrong. Minirth couldn’t have died of natural causes. He was in his sixties, sure, but he was—had been—an elf. Like me.

Age doesn’t kill elves.

I walked right in to Reynolds’ house. The wards didn’t bug me; I’d helped create and maintain them, and I knew he relied on them more than he did any mundane security; I just strode inside, wishing there was something I could hit.

“What the hell, Doc? ‘Natural causes,’ it says? Come on.”

“Please relax, Mr. Kincaid.” He’d called me that all through school, and every time we spoke in the half-a-lifetime since. Reynolds wasn’t Minirth, wasn’t as relaxed, as friendly. Minirth had loved the Hermetic Order of the Auric Aurora for their research and their knowledge. Reynolds loved them, I think, for their rules.

I paced in front of his couch, long legs eating up his little living room in a few steps each time. He stood at the bottom of his stairs, shook his head, and let out a sigh.

“Come upstairs to the office. Shut the door first, though, will you?”

Still mad and petty, I slammed it hard. When I got upstairs, Reynolds was already seated, quirking one eyebrow at the chair opposite his desk. Some things never changed. He’d officially retired to part-time about the time I’d graduated, and only taught the occasional class here and there. None of us had been surprised at his retirement; during my time as a student we’d already snickered, sure of ourselves and barely old enough to drink, about how he was vain enough to hide his age with a few small illusions. He looked about the same, today, and acted about the same. His hair was still jet black, his skin still free of age spots, but I was sure it was still little spells doing it, locked in place by the University of Washington class ring he wore. His office on campus seemed to have just moved down here and turned into his office at home, all lined with old-timey books like so many other professors. The only concession to modernity was that he’d upgraded from his ancient, oak desk to a touchscreen one not terribly unlike mine; hell, maybe they just hadn’t been able to move the huge thing out of his office.

I threw myself into his chair, sullen, impatient.

“Mr. Kincaid,” he said before I could get started, “Would you like some tea?”

“No thanks,” I forced myself to sit up a little straighter. It looked like he hadn’t wanted any, either, was just trying to cut me off and keep me civil.

“I understand that you’re upset, Mr. Kincaid, and I’m sorry to have caused that. But I need you to be aware that that’s why I called you personally. Christopher would have wanted, I think, for you to hear about it from one of us in person.”

“Natural causes, though, Doc? What happened, really?”

There was a pregnant silence, then he reached out with a simple magic fingers incantation of his own, and the door shut behind me.

“Do you remember my title, Mr. Kincaid?”

“Your…what, now?”

“Not the arcane vernacular, necessarily, but my position within the Order.”

“Treasurer, right? Look, if this is about my dues, I think it can fucking wait, don’t—”

“Partially correct, yes. But as the High Magistrate of the Exchequer, I don’t simply keep the dues and dole out research funds.” That part, I knew, was true. I’d been paid by the Order before, paid through Reynolds, when they needed something done on my side of town, on my side of the law. He handled paychecks and stuff, but so what?

“I am also something of a record-keeper. Not the Loremaster of the Writ, no, but I am the one who handles the ugly necessity of paperwork for a group our size. Twenty-five members in good standing.” He didn’t quite arch an eyebrow at me, the black sheep twenty-sixth. “And regular comings and goings, research work, secure thesis storage, all of that. City certificates for our various activities, permits, and on and on. Christopher knows—excuse me, knew—how much I handled for the Order. He gave me something else to handle.

“I want to hire you, Mr. Kincaid.”

“You…Doc, what’s going on? C’mon. What happened to Minirth?”

“I want to hire you, Mr. Kincaid, in accordance with the last will and testament of Christopher Theodore Minirth, First-Circle member of the Hermetic Order of the Auroric Aura, and my lodge brother these last twenty-two years.”

I wanted a drink. Reynolds kept going.

“He left it with me, formally, legally. His will, and a promise of what you’ll get when you’ve met the requirement he set for you; Christopher asked for you, specifically, to do him this one last favor, this one last project on his behalf.”

He tapped the surface of his desk, drawing up a document, zooming, then flicking it my way to realign itself on my side of the desk. My headware took a screenshot, downloaded a copy of the file, while I just blinked like an idiot.

“Mr. Kincaid, prior to his passing, Dr. Minirth made it clear that he wants you to investigate his murder.”

CHAPTER 7

How do you say no to that?

How do you refuse to look into your mentor’s death, even when he hasn’t reached out from beyond the grave and asked you to do so? How do you—a PI, mind, in this case—turn your back on a case like that, in a city like this?

Seattle didn’t care. The law didn’t care. They’d already written it off as natural causes, already decided to let his body cool and let the world forget about him. Knight Errant wasn’t involved, and never would be, campus security didn’t give a damn. The world might not care, but I still could.

“Tell me what you know, Doc.” My Transys Avalon started recording.

“Christopher was found dead this morning. The janitorial crew on campus called it in, doing their normal check of the offices, just after four a.m. Jeannie—you remember her, I hope, our office administrator?—said Christopher hadn’t left the office last night, but that wasn’t unusual.”

I felt bad for the cleaner, but I was glad it hadn’t been Jeannie that’d found him. She was a sweetheart, the department’s angel, and it wouldn’t have done her heart any favors.

“Preliminary findings said it was his heart. That’s what the reports say. That’s what the police say.”

“But?”

An elf could have a heart attack. Could. 

“He was low on blood.”

“Bleeding out? What, like he fell and cut himself?”

“No. No marks. No cuts. No bloodstains. It was his heart that killed him. He was just missing quite a bit of blood at the time.”

I felt a cold little ball in the pit of my stomach, and saw fangs in the dark. I swallowed the fear and anger instead of trusting myself to say anything worthwhile right then. If I’d let myself talk, it woulda peeled the paint from the walls.

“I want you, Mr. Kincaid, the Hermetic Order wants you, Christopher wanted you to look into this. Do…what you do. Get to the bottom of it. Find out who, or what killed him. Find out why. Tell me. He was my friend, Mr. Kincaid, not just yours. Please, take this job.”

“Done.”

It hurt, just a little, that he thought he had to even ask.

“You’ll be rewarded in accordance to his documents, of course. Christopher left you a data chip, I believe, but I’ll need to double-check the will to make sure. In addition, I’m authorized to waive any past-due membership fees, and grant you increased access to the Order’s libraries.”

He just had to drag that back up. Hitting a nerve while I was still reeling from Minirth’s death.

“Doc, listen, I appreciate that. I’ll take you up on the dues thing, but I’m not interested in, in, in regular monthly meetings, sitting in at the book club, critiquing theoretical journals together.”

“Because you don’t work like that.”

He knew. I’d almost forgotten, somehow, but he knew.

“Because I don’t work like that.”

“I see. You wish to continue squandering the Talent you have left, Mr. Kincaid, and continue to refuse not only being a full member of the Hermetic Order, but a proper hermetic at all. What I long suspected about your tradition, your methods, what Christopher confided in me but I ignored, all those years ago, is—”

I stood.

“I’m not in the mood for a lecture tonight, Doc. I’m taking the job. I’ll take the forgiven back-dues. But you can take the sermon and—”

Dammit, I didn’t want to let him make me this mad, not right then, not after how the conversation had started. I choked down the anger and just forced a nod.

“I’m taking the job. Not the advice. I’ll coordinate with the campus cops, so please tell them about me if they call to confirm. Tell them about…the job. The investigation. Not the other thing.”

“I won’t tell anyone ‘the other thing,’ Mr. Kincaid,” his tone had turned icy, formal, distant. He was a professor, I was a failing student he wanted out of his office as soon as I turned in one last assignment.

“Not the campus authorities, not the other members of the Order.”

Because they’d expel me at best.

“That will be all, Mr. Kincaid.”

I grabbed my hat and took off, feeling his gaze on my back as I did. Ari had waited outside—she could’ve slipped through his wards as easily as I did, or I could’ve held them open for her if I’d wanted, but she liked to stay on the streets in these livelier neighborhoods—and playing with a dog walking a kid, when I got out to the street.

I didn’t even get to really slam the door to vent, on my way out. Ari was shaking the mutt’s paw, the mutt’s tagging-along kiddo on a leash was in awe at the whole thing, and I didn’t want to wreck the moment.

Chris Minirth was dead, and all talking to Reynolds had done was get me even more pissed off about it.

It was time to go to work.

CHAPTER 8

I couldn’t hit the streets like I normally did. Not the streets I knew, at least, or hit them in my usual way. I wasn’t in Puyallup. U-Dub was Downtown, or really what should’ve been called Uptown; the heart of Seattle, the city proper, the glossy, clean, white hat-side of town. I’d lived on campus, grudgingly, but been at that age where I wanted to get away from my dad. Given the choice, in retrospect, it would’ve felt more honest to sleep back home in Puyallup, where so many Downtowners were sure I belonged.

Knight Errant hassled me twice, just that first evening. Flashing lights and a tinny, robotic voice pulled me over when I’d circled the campus trying to find the new visitor parking lot, then I’d had a pair of officers parked nearby, waiting for me, when I got back to the Ford later that night. Puyallup tags, Puyallup registration, Puyallup dust clinging to the siding? Downtown cops’re gonna come say hi.

I wasn’t in the mood for their crap, but I was even less in the mood to get shot to death for assaulting an officer, or locked up forever for me an’ Ari putting up a fight. I smiled and nodded, told them I had licenses, assured them I wasn’t here to sell chips or drugs, promised I wouldn’t put a hand anywhere near my concealed carry piece, showed them the data for my magician’s license, swore that the car wasn’t stolen, and—finally, when you’d think they were bored—explained I was here on official business as a registered investigator working a case for a nearby client.

No wonder folks hated cops, y’know?

Campus police weren’t much better. Sorry, they said, but it would be indelicate to let me into the man’s office so soon after his death. Sorry, they said, but there’s really nothing more they could tell me. Sorry, they said, perhaps I’d like a copy of the campus newsfeed to read their public statement of mourning about such a dignified researcher? Sorry, they said, but there was no need for them to let me interview their janitorial staff, the poor worker was really quite rattled and had too much work to do next shift anyway. Sorry, they said, but what were they supposed to do, he was old and had died of a heart attack, right? Sorry, they said, but there really wasn’t any need to validate my visitor parking tag, hadn’t I better be on my way before I got a parking ticket?

Sorry, I said—confusing Ari, since I was just muttering to myself while walking away—but that wasn’t gonna cut it.

“Ariana.” I stood around a corner, line of sight broken from the evening-dwindling campus pedestrians. “Improved invisibility.”

Presto change-o, voilà, and abracadabra. She faded back to the unreality of the Astral, and I cut my way across campus without anyone seeing me. Ari’d keep an eye out and hold up the spell, and I’d tiptoe in and do my thing. I slid my aura, my sustained invisibility spell, and my weapon focus, all right through the Grant Landrum Metaphysical Sciences Building’s wards. Being a member of the Hermetic Order wasn’t always a headache.

I sauntered for the stairwell—elevator might look weird, empty—and headed to the third floor, where the magic happened. Literally. Offices had moved up and down the hall in the decade-plus I hadn’t been here, but I knew there wouldn’t be a floor change; wards and other, even longer-lasting protective measures were too costly to move. The labs were still on the third floor, which meant the offices would still be somewhere on the same.

It was late enough in the evening that everyone was gone but the part-timers—hell, Reynolds might come in for a lecture soon, a quick data-access from a friendly terminal showed me he taught his night class on Tuesdays—so I could basically wander as I pleased. I found Minirth’s office, and had to get old school to pop it open; my small lockpick gun wasn’t my most prized possession or my most expensive, but in my day-to-day PI routine, when I wasn’t in a life or death struggle where I had to lean on my Colt and my wand, it was probably my most important.

The hallway was empty, so the little clicks and pops of the gun went unnoticed. I was left alone in a dead man’s office, his workplace, his home away from home. He was, like Reynolds, a bibliophile. Old school. Paper books lined the walls, his desk was still polished wood, the back of his chair had an actual tweed jacket, with patched elbows, hanging from it.

Chris Minirth was dead, and here I was, having to sneak around just to give him a halfway proper investigation.

I blinked over to the Astral, and couldn’t help but taste the violence of his passing. No wonder Reynolds had called me, no wonder Minirth’s friends in the Hermetic Order knew something was wrong. Campus cops didn’t, even Knight Errant didn’t care enough or know enough to look into it. I wondered why. Anyone with astral sight—and plenty of folks working on this floor had it!—could’ve told them something was wrong, that he hadn’t died peacefully. I filed it away and tried to see what I could.

For the most part, his office, the whole floor, felt like…enthusiasm. Hope. It had a different background than Puyallup, a different smell-taste-feeling in the air, in the walls, in the bones of the place. It was a building full of bright young people, upper-middle class or elevated there through a fantastic Talent, people just starting to head toward the prime of their lives, full of the promise of a better tomorrow, being guided on their way by faculty and staff who’d already been there themselves. There was a wisdom to the place, a tranquility matching the eagerness, a sense of belonging and comfort.

That changed, though, in a swirling, dark maelstrom centered on, and just behind, his desk. The hope was gone, replaced by violence and fear; no, worse than fear. Terror. Rabid, animal-mad, whole-hearted terror. The sort magic could create, whether through dark spell-slinging or a more raw, emotional, direct manipulation. He’d not just died ugly, he’d died afraid. Alone, except for his killer.

I turned my indignation and sadness into power, channeled the sense of loss and turned it into a spell.

“Laiad,” I whispered, the Enochian word for secrets.

The room opened up to me, cataloging every little thing in it. It was a simple, but indispensable spell of detection, of searching, of finding. I saw, I just knew everything in his office. A list appeared, an inventory, tickling at the edges of my brain, as perfectly clear as a heads-up from my implanted computer. 

Minirth’d taught me this spell, years earlier, and at the time I’d wondered when I’d ever use it; I’d been on the fast track for tactical training, not Department of Paranormal Investigation. What did I need some poncy detection magic for?

Stupid kid.

My head filled with information. One desk, no duh, thanks a lot, spell. One office chair. One visitor chair. Sixty-four old-fashioned paper books, dusty and loved, all listed Chicago-citation style, alphabetized nicely for me. A basic commlink, a barebones datapad-only Renraku model, the sort of no-frills basic tablet five years behind the curve, useful for taking notes, sharing small files, and basic wireless access. One sportcoat. One desktop tridphone. Seven wooden frames, holding certificates, three holding landscape photos from outside Portland. One datapad light pen. See how this is all going? Lots of nothing.

The commlink was the most likely thing to give me any insight, but I wasn’t equipped to hack my way into bupkiss. I pocketed it and called it a day.

What got me was the stuff that wasn’t there. No blood stains. No sign of a struggle. No spent shell casings, no broken glass, no battered furniture, no broken restraints. Knight Errant and the university weren’t even calling it a murder, they’d seen nothing to make them classify it that way. Only the Astral aftertaste of his death—and the fact he was down a couple pints—gave anything away.

I forgot about sneaking for a second and just threw myself into the chair opposite his at the desk; it would’ve felt weird, even after all these years and all I’d been through since my time at U-Dub, to sit in his chair.

Christopher Minirth was a savant. He’d brought big prestige to the campus, big money, big intellect. The man’d been educated in Portland, down in Tír Tairngire—I couldn’t shake that elven country this week, could I?—and had studied with some of the biggest magical names of our generation. He’d been a double major, a pioneer in both fields, an expert in Thaumaturgical Theories and also aced post-graduate classes down in Portland, studying Parazoology. A quarter-century ago, when Ehran “The Scribe,” the premier magical theorist of the century, had given his game-changing Humans and the Cycle of Magic speech? Minirth had been there. Right there. In the crowd, front row, sitting at Ehran’s own table at that fundraiser. He’d been an understudy to the big man, already a professor by then, learning new things from a supposed immortal every day. Minirth had been one of hermetic theory’s best and brightest, but was dedicated enough to the education of all sentients, dedicated enough to sharing knowledge instead of hoarding it, that he’d taken a position outside the elven fantasyland. Instead of soaking up Ehran’s know-how forever, he spent decades sharing it with others, here at U-Dub.

He’d taught me my first metamagical technique, Centering. It had been Minirth, not Reynolds, who’d defended my choice of Enochian when the time came to decide upon an ancient language used to Center, to channel mystical power. Minirth himself had used Sperethiel, an unpopular language outside the Tír, and one only shakily supported by then-current theoretical texts. Reynolds had always pushed students toward Latin, his own favored method, and I’d stubbornly bucked the trend. I’d been mostly a golden boy, mostly a spit-and-polish sort back then, but I’d had my rare moments of rebellion, even as a student. Minirth had stuck up for me, learned Enochian—like it was no big deal, just picked up another language to help the idiot purposefully making his life harder—to help tutor me through it, and had been my Metamagical Practicum advisor to boot. That was him, in a nutshell.

He’d been a great teacher, and a good man, and I was letting him down.

I cast a glance to the hallway’s camera—I was clear, it was cycling away at the moment—and pocketed his tablet. It went invisible as I slipped it into a broad coat pocket, and then I headed back out into the hallway, unseen, no one around to hear me as I left.

Magic hadn’t helped much, just yet. Electronics would have to do it. For that, I had to make a call.

CHAPTER 9

Downtown wasn’t gonna be much help, so I got the Ford pointed back toward Puyallup, then spun up my Transys to call my friends. Skiptrace, they called themselves, a pair of bounty hunters that were, aside from Ari, who I’d made myself, probably my best friends in the world.

Trace was a buddy from a few semesters at U-Dub; in fact, she’d helped me with my undergrad-mandated technology courses. Later, she went rebel and started slinging her tech-skills with one foot in the shadows. Skip was a street-tough brat outta Carbonado, orkish, Trace’s betusked girlfriend, who did the heavy lifting when the three of us went chasing skells.

“Who is it?” Skip snarled after the third ring, her broad features glaring at her commlink’s lens the way she only did when my number came up on the caller ID. “What’choo want, Kincaid?”

She’s a charmer, our Skip. All bulging biceps and shoulders that put mine to shame, hair slash-cut up both sides giving her an almost-mohawk, cybereyes glinting and giving away that she’s got more chrome hidden elsewhere. She was, to put it delicately, the muscle.

“Looking for Trace,” I mostly kept my eyes on the road, Ari in the backseat, watching drops of water slither across the windows.

“One sec,” that got me another glare—Skip’s the jealous sort, and she’d been with her girlfriend for a long time—before she headed off-screen, then I heard a muffled almost-conversation. 

Trace slid into view, mocha-dark skin, glowing bio-tat, flash of chrome from a line of datajacks near her hairline.

“Hoi, Jimmy. You need some tech support?”

“Hoi, Trace. Yeah. A friend’s dead. A good one. Cops don’t care. I’ve got his commlink, want to see if we can crack it open and scout for goodies inside, maybe a calendar, maybe some threatening messages or something. I know you’ve probably still got some backdoors at U-Dub, too, you think you can get into their security feed, mayb—”

“Bwahahahah!” Skip’s bone-shaking belly laugh cut me off, then the ork herself, out of breath and red in the face, crowded into the screen. One rippling arm got thrown over Trace’s shoulders, and only then did I notice the decker was having trouble keeping a straight face, too.

“You ain’t even talking to us, you silly dick!” I told myself she meant it as slang for ‘detective,’ even as Skip kept going. “Best. Recording. Ever!”

Trace fought a little grin, giving the commlink a playful wink. “Sorry, Jimmy. If you’re getting this, it means you called us while we’re working with Chase.”

Fuck.

Chase: Errant Knight. The bounty-hunting tridshow, so-called reality tv, sponsored by Ares, along with every piece of gear the titular star used. He was in town, shooting a new season. Skip and Trace had gotten the hook-up, were on-location with him, doing Zeus-knows-what in Zeus-knows-where in the Sprawl, shooting up bad guys with camera drones recording the whole thing. 

Dammit. Dammit.

“See you later, Jimmy. Leave a message, I guess?” Trace gave me a smile and a finger-wiggling wave, Skip pointed, still laughing, almost crying from it.

“But we ain’t gonna check it, ’cause we’re busy bein’ famous! Sucker!” Skip snuck in one last shout before I got a pre-message beep.

I floored it, taking out my frustration on the gas pedal as I sent a mental command to hang up my headware phone. In old movies—the black and white things my cyberoptics make life look like—they always had these huge telephones with big, blocky handsets. They got to slam them down when they were pissed, got to break stuff with ’em if they were pissed enough. Me, I just got to think real hard to end a shitty call. I was missing out.

Born in the wrong century, that’s me.

The Ford’s big front-end snarled my frustration as I pulled onto the on-ramp and transitioned my Transys over to evening traffic reports. I wasn’t in the mood to get snarled up in some go-gang bullshit, taking stray shots as packs of bikers fought over stretches of highway. The coast was clear, looked like, so I kept the pedal down—it made me feel better, sue me—and headed toward Puyallup.

I had other resources, other connections, other folks who could crack a commlink and share juicy files with me. I liked Skip and Trace, but that didn’t mean I relied on just them.

I headed toward Sunny Salvo’s.

CHAPTER 10

“James,” the voice that greeted me inside Salvo’s was sonorous, deep, powerful. Confident. It wasn’t Enzo, with his brittle pride and hollow, novacoke-fueled swagger I was talking to, no. It was someone with a voice worth listening to.

Enzo was a bully. This was a man.

Shit.

“Don Gianelli.” I took my hat off, but hell if I was bowing or kissing a ring or whatever. “Long time no see.”

The Don was maybe a dozen years older than me, still fit, still powerful. Salt-and-pepper hair, a neatly-trimmed goatee, a suit that’d pay for my rent for a year. He had Enzo—gaudy Enzo, balding Enzo, smug-faced Enzo—over one shoulder with his little mage, a massive troll in a perfectly tailored suit on his other side.

“Sit, James, sit,” he’d always called me that, ever since me and Enzo were kids. My dad called me Jimmy. Joseph Gianelli, an up-and-coming crime boss, Enzo’s uncle had always called me James, like I was an adult.

Ari’s mental link let me know the troll was hiding power. Real power. He was an adept, she told me, and one with more raw Talent than Uranus. I couldn’t counterspell a physical adept. I definitely couldn’t take one in a fight.

Uranus leaned in to whisper to Enzo about Ariana’s protective hovering on the Astral, Enzo leaned in to whisper to his uncle, and the Don waved him away. He wasn’t stupid. He knew. He knew what she was, how she worked. He was an educated man. A Don.

“James, we need to have a talk.”

There was no greasy slab of pizza, no sniveling Salvo Junior who’d been browbeaten into opening his kid’s restaurant to the mob, no obviously threatening Mafia men at my back to intimidate me. Joseph Gianelli didn’t need the cheap tricks, didn’t sit down at tables covered in children’s food, didn’t let Salvo keep the silly robots and AR-gaudiness powered up when he was here.

“My nephew tells me there’ve been some problems lately, James.”

Enzo gave me a smug look, lip curling a little, confident now that his uncle was here.

All I could think of at that moment was a game, maybe thirty years ago, when he and I were neighbor kids. His old man, Joseph’s brother, was locked up in McMillin. My old man was lead hack there, watching over him. In those days, half of Puyallup was like our street; correctional officers and their families all crammed in next to the white-collar crooks’ blood, getting along pretty okay. Seven, eight, maybe ten years old, me and Enzo played street ball. Enzo was a bully, even then. He liked to pitch, since it meant everyone was looking at him.

I remembered Joseph, his uncle, fast-tracked toward an MBA, standing on one side of the street with the crooks and their kin. Slick hair, fast car, sharp clothes, always with a gorgeous dame. I remembered my old man, strong jaw, buzz-cut, lines in his face, standing across the street, staring down Joe instead of watching the game.

Enzo kept pitching inside, trying to push batters back off the plate. High and inside, snickering when they flinched or  laughing out loud if he got sloppy and hit ’em. He’d take a walk, he’d give up a base, just to hit someone. Even as a kid. Fucking Enzo.

“No problems, Don.” I shrugged, refusing to be afraid, and not just ’cause Ari was close. “A little mojo test, that’s all. Order of Merlyn taking a swing at my club, is all. You know how brotherhoods can be. No harm, no foul, though.”

“Not that, James. What led up to that, what came before that. The matter of that little man’s debt, and our right to collect it. The misunderstanding with the Sleeping Tiger, Kenran-Kai’s little massage parlor.”

Bunraku parlor, actually. Whorehouse. Nightmare factory, where girls were cybernetically implanted, forced to work as prostitutes, memory-wiped and personality-overriden day and night. Enzo’d wanted to keep it after we shut it down. I hadn’t let him, because I’d had to trade it to save a little girl.

“And the troubles before that,” the Don kept going, waving a thin cigarillo—that’s right, Enzo, tell your fucking uncle he can’t smoke in this joint, I dare you—airily. “The two disloyal men you decided to go after yourself, instead of reporting to him. Clashes with the law where you may have been involved. Minor rackets, some of them with men associated with us, that you put a stop to in recent years.

“It’s about rispetto, that’s all. It’s a matter of respect.”

“I respect you, Don.” I respect that you’ve got a small army you can call up. I respect that you could have me killed just about any time you wanted to. I respect that you’d burn down half of Puyallup to do it, that you could burn down the other half if you were stupid enough to go to war with the Kenran-Kai, that you could disrupt the delicate balance of power in my home city with an errant wave of your hand.

“Do you respect my nephew? My Capo?”

I remembered Enzo whipping that ball at me, trying to embarrass me in front of his uncle, that gorgeous girl on his arm, my dad, my block. Trying to scare me off the plate right outside of my own home. I remembered taking my swing, leaning outside to get distance, putting my whole body into it. I remembered the crack of the bat, and that line drive I sent right down Enzo’s throat. I remembered how he cried at the bloody nose, how my old man had smiled—smiled!—and then gone back inside, satisfied with the day’s game, win or lose.

“I respect you, Don.”

“You see that? The fucking balls on this guy, Uncle Joe? What’d I te—”

The Don silenced him with a little glare, a flick of his eyes, a small shake of his head. Enzo went red-faced, flushed to the top of his balding head, and I wondered if years of Sunny Salvo’s shitty pizza might do him in, right then and there.

“I appreciate your honesty, James, but you can see how an answer like that doesn’t comfort me. It doesn’t make me feel like this is a conversation we’ll never need to have again, you understand? It doesn’t let me feel like this is a problem that’s been solved in any meaningful way, that I can go back to my home and sleep well tonight, knowing you won’t keep being a pebble in our shoe, here in Puyallup.”

“Sorry?”

Not sorry.

“I’ve known you a long time. Just like I knew your father. He was a good man. You’re a good man. You’ve done some good work for this neighborhood. You don’t play favorites. I know that. Don’t make me regret it, James. Don’t make me think word’s getting out that we’re going easy on you.”

I wasn’t going to make a promise I knew I’d break. I just stayed quiet. He gave me a long look, and right as Enzo seemed like he was either gonna have an aneurism or speak out of turn, the Don started talking again.

“So tell me, James. What brought you here tonight? After the recent unpleasantness, after knowing my nephew’s upset with you, what made you come here?”

“I came here to ask a favor.”

Enzo nearly had a stroke. Uranus gawked. The Don held it in for a second before shaking his head, breathing sweet, cherry-smelling smoke at me, and loosing a smile that could cut glass.

“Get out of here before I have you killed.”

I stood up. Enzo paled. Uranus started whispering—Latin, no doubt—and the troll shifted his weight just a little bit, reached up with one big hand and silently took off his glasses.

I thought about it. About calling down Ariana like an angry god, about making a play. I thought about responding to the threat with violence, about seeing how quickly I could get my Colt, thought about if it’d be faster to grab the untouched wine glass between us, break it on the edge of the table, and go for the side of the Don’s throat. I wondered how fast the troll was. I wondered if it would be a good way to die, if it would help Puyallup, or just leave her open to the Yakuza and the Mafia counter-push.

I smiled and reached for my hat.

“Sure thing, Don Gianelli.” I smiled at Enzo; trying to make it wolfish, trying to make it a promise. “See you ’round, Enzo.”

“You mean ‘Capo Gianelli,’ you fuckin’ prick,” he called after me, all dignity and gravitas.

CHAPTER 11

When I got out front, the Ford’s tires were slashed and the two doormen—same mooks as earlier—were elbowing each other and giggling like they’d pulled off a Sunday school prank. The Don did have Matrix support. If he had someone slick enough to get past my car’s security so it wouldn’t alert me to vandalism, he had someone who could get into this second-rate commlink without breaking a sweat. He had someone, he wanted me to know he had someone who could give me what I wanted. He had to know I didn’t want muscle—couldn’t ask for muscle after the Sleeping Tiger fuck-up—and he knew I’d never ask Uranus for magical help. He knew I’d been there looking for a tech-geek, and he knew he’d show me that he had one.

I didn’t give the pricks the satisfaction of looking pissed off. I whistled a jaunty little tune as I climbed into the Ford like nothing was wrong, and drove off, ignoring a half-dozen tire pressure reports as they swarmed over my virtual dash.

Runflat tires or not, they didn’t really run, you know? I limped along, grimacing, and didn’t even have to whip up my nav-map to know where I had to go next. Black’s was a neighborhood institution, and I’d been there more times than I could count. It had been at the Black Junkyards where I’d first met Turbo Bunny, who’d gone on past me to turn into one of the current shadowrunner greats. It had been at Black’s that we’d worked on my Ford together, put together the Frankenstein monster of a discarded, oversized limo engine and a patrol-modified Ford Americar, halfway as a joke, just out to see what it’d drive like. It had been at the Black Junkyards after a chip-addled tryst—she and I all tangled up, our pile of clothes next to a button that would’ve dropped a fucking car on our fucking heads—that I realized she and I and chips were gonna kill each other someday. It had been at Black’s where we’d first set up our gentle-elves’ agreement to avoid one another, to talk only through the long-suffering owner, Black, or through mutual friends like Hard Exit. Black’s was the only place I could go to fix this monster of a car, and it had great prices anyhow, so Black’s was where I was heading.

Black wasn’t there this late, though.

“Hoi,” his sometime assistant grunted as I walked in, a sturdy-looking dwarf with an increasingly shaggy, increasingly wild beard. He had brown hair going gray at the temples and streaking his bushy beard, but dwarves age about like elves do, and he could’ve been anywhere between thirty and fifty. Hardpoint was his name. I knew him. Some of Seattle was starting to know him. He was a rigger, and not a bad one. Maybe no Turbo Bunny—and sure as shit not as easy on the eyes as her—but an up-and-comer, a hot hand with a gun-drone, and as reliable as a shadowrunner could be.

“Hardpoint,” I nodded. He and I’d chatted a few times, even if we weren’t necessarily friendly. I glanced at the guts of a gun-drone spread across the counter, let out a low whistle at the top-end assault rifle the little vectored-thrust contraption was built around. Ares Alphas weren’t cheap. Upgrading security with cobbled-together ’bots was how he paid Black for getting to use the shop. “How’s biz?”

He gave a noncommittal grunt again, a little shrug.

“Good enough. Black isn’t here.”

I saw a camera drone zipping around, wondered how many more he always had up and running, flying a perpetual perimeter. Of him, or of Black’s? Riggers, man. They kind of weird me out.

“Yeah, figured. Listen, I got some flats. Need to get good wheels under me again.”

He tossed his head without really looking up from the half-dismantled drone he was working on, leaned back over his baby, hands working. The dataterminal at the end of the counter already had what I needed pulled up, right size, three of ’em runflats again, but the fourth a standard tire, all of them flagged in the junkyard thanks to their new policy of slapping RFIDs on incoming inventory.

I smiled and quirked an eyebrow. He was a sharp one, this dwarf.

“Ari.” She faded into existence next to me. Hardpoint didn’t even look up. Our mental link meant she knew what I was looking for, meant she knew the places in the junkyard to go looking for it. “Easter Egg hunt, okay kiddo? Betcha can’t carry all four at once.”

“Betcha I can!”

Mental link or not, deep-down sharp as a whip or not, she was a kid. An excited, eager to please kid. 

“Waffles for supper says nuh-uh,” I gave her a ‘dare-you’ smile.

She took off.

Hardpoint hadn’t blinked, just stayed focused on the task at hand. He had a limited amount of time to do his work with Black’s big junkyard inventory and tools, and he focused on it. He worked on one thing at a time, got it done, got it done right. He knew his cars, knew his guns, knew his drones.

Maybe he knew other electronics.

“Hey, ’Point.” I leaned on the counter, careful not to touch what he was working on. “I’ve got this commlink…”

CHAPTER 12

“Seven Steps to Heaven” woke me up, jangling directly into my inner ear, pointed there by my unflinchingly loyal bastard of an Avalon headware computer. The jazz tune was a favorite of mine, but the version I used for an alarm clock was a terrible rendition of it. It jarred me awake without fail, even though it left me in a lousy mood.

It was ten in the morning. I had an hour to clean up and check for messages before Hardpoint’s boy was supposed to show up, guaranteed to be able to help me with the codeslinging I’d need. Gentry, the guy was called, and Hardpoint had given my elven ears a sly grin when he’d told me about the hacker. Ariana and I had grabbed waffles on the way home from Black’s. I’d made a few calls after that, checking around to see if anyone knew any reason I shouldn’t trust the kid with a few jobs, but he’d come up pretty clean. Gal, a madam operating out of a high-end Downtown hotel after getting her start in Puyallup, gave him a glowing endorsement. Good enough, I figured, for a commlink and a few security cameras.

While I slept, Skip and Trace had sent all their contacts, me included, a few more emails about Chase: Errant Knight, just in case we cared. I’d gotten a parking ticket after all—automatically charged to my SIN, delivered electronically, the wusses—from the campus cops, and Weazely sent me a note too panicked for decent punctuation, unless he’d always typed like that and I’d never noticed. He’d heard about me going to Sunny Salvo’s a couple times, and was worried I’d ratted him out, after all. I messaged him back not to worry about it, and to give Darlene a hug for me.

I hoped Don Gianelli wasn’t going to kill him to send me some sort of message.

I started on one of my chalky, chocolatey protein shakes for breakfast, let Ari spruce me up with a couple spells, and fought a yawn. About two minutes early, my Transys chirped with an incoming call from the number Hardpoint had given me. Gentry was pretty punctual, I’d give him that. I glanced down at the small security camera feed that kept an eye on things out front and in my hallway, and didn’t see anything.

“Kincaid,” I answered, brow furrowed just a little. If he was calling me from traffic halfway across town, since he didn’t seem to be calling me from right out front, my estimation of him went down a little.

“Nice to meetcha,” the decker gave me a sunny grin, judging by the angle he had his commlink in his hand, and I saw a cloudy sky over his head. “How, uh, how do I get into your building? Stairwell door’s locked, and I’m pretty sure you don’t want me to bust it.”

The loopy bastard was on the roof.

“You…ran here?” I gave him a sidelong look a few minutes later, back in my apartment. He was in a color-shifting courier’s bodysuit, armor-lined and glowing with tech logos, the sort of thing loopy bastards who run everywhere wore. He had a poncho on over top of it, at least, giving him a little chem-protection against the rain, and covering—more importantly to him, I’m sure—his cyberdeck from the elements.

“I run everywhere,” he said, like it was a totally reasonable thing for someone to say in the 2070s, not the 1070s.

“On the roofs?”

“On the roofs.” He nodded, and I wondered why I’d let this lunatic into my apartment.

I just gave him a long, hard look while his eyes went a little out of focus behind his rain-wet goggles, and he tapped incessantly at the hardware strapped to his forearm. He was a human, probably a dozen years younger than me, and he was in the sort of shape I’d seen back before dropping out of college ball to focus on schoolwork. His body was dotted with electronics, from the datajacks behind a mildly pointed ear to the bracer-housed cyberdeck he wore on his left forearm, here and there he had wiring going to his bodysuit, what looked like a string of old commlinks daisy-chained together for processing power, and all sorts of other hardware strung all over him. I dragged my gaze away before my Sideways started trying to find patterns in the wiring. There was a gun on his hip, though, and even as I recognized a Colt America L36, my headware confirmed it. 

Well, at least he had that going for him.

“When I’m not on a gig, I moonlight with Alley Cat Express,” he offered up into the silence I’d created. “It’s a decent side job, really. Reasonable rates, I’ve got solid headware to handle the best paying data runs, and—”

“And you get to run on roofs like a maniac.”

I knew about the ACE. They were all fruit-loops like this guy, tempting gravity for fun, a mixture of data geeks, cybered athletes, and physical adepts. They ran physical goods in-city, using bikes, skates, and boards for some jobs, sticking to their own two feet—cybered or otherwise—for most. They danced through traffic, cut corners by sticking to the roofs, and frustrated the cops with their periodic tagging. They were something between a gang without any turf, a legitimate courier company, and a gang with, in a way, all the turf in the city.

And one of ’em was in my house. Goggles, bodysuit, goofy grin, and all. Great. I was trusting an Alley Cat to help me track Chris Minirth’s killer. Bang-up job, Jimmy Kincaid. Way to make good choices.

“All right, listen.” I might as well get this over with. “I’ve got a datapad, an old Renraku model, and I need—”

“A Renraku Dojo, right, there on your desk? The dinosaur precursor to the Sensei, which is already kind of a piece of crap? Yeah. I spotted its icon while you were eyeballing me, and figured it must’ve been what Hardpoint sent me here for, since the only other ’links here are the Avalon in your head and the one in your pocket, but that looks like a burner.”

“Yeah, so listen, what I need you to—”

“You owe me a hundred nuyen. Check your email,” he said, giving me a head tilt and an eyebrow arch that made me want to punch him in the throat.

A second later, my Transys chirped about an incoming message, automatically unbundled the files, and a data packet fell into my head. The message was signed with an ornate G, animated in the flowing script Sperethiel-types liked, and Gentry’s smug little mouth turned up in an even smugger little grin.

“Balls yeah, CHOCO-PUNCH protein shakes!” He’d seen the half-finished one on my desk. “Hook a celé up, bro?”

My linguasoft—still slotted from the Ancients and Laésa meet that felt like years ago—helpfully let me know that a celé was a non-elf. If he kept peppering his language with elfy-talk, I might have to bust his jaw for him.

I ignored it and let him rifle through my fridge—as long as he stuck to protein shakes and stayed away from my beer or the last of the Petrowski Farm-fresh eggs we’d traded for—while I rifled through files. I might not be able to hack ’em, but I sift through data just fine. My Sideways saw to that. The obsession with detail, the need to find patterns, the knack for noticing them emerge from nothing all helped with this sort of thing. My Transys was a pretty top-notch processor to boot, and I devoured his itinerary, his outbound and incoming messages, his notes, everything Gentry had peeled—effortlessly—from the datapad and sent my way.

I didn’t find what I was after. I didn’t have any hastily scrawled threats, any desperate blackmail attempts, any frantic tries at negotiating with—and conveniently naming—some psychopath who’d figured out a way to quietly kill Minirth. I hadn’t found anyone with a grudge, hadn’t found any shady appointments in his book, hadn’t found any research worth killing anyone after. I found allusions to a project, I found notes about research with an unnamed subject, and I found holes. Holes with patterns. His logged office hours, RFID trackers that kept track of his location any time he was on campus, said he was in his office every Tuesday and Thursday night from 7:00 to 8:00. He didn’t have a single appointment scheduled for that time, didn’t have a single file he’d created, manipulated, or saved during that time, and didn’t have a single posted grade, correspondence sent to a coworker, or anything else. He’d been there at that time, twice a week, but hadn’t been doing anything—or rather, hadn’t been doing anything he’d recorded or logged anywhere, hadn’t been working on any projects anyone else knew about, hadn’t been talking to anyone through official electronic channels.

They were just logged in his book under a single initial, N.

N.

I cross-checked it with today’s date—sue me, I use my cranially-mounted supercomputer to remind me of the day of the week, sometimes—and gritted my teeth. It lined up. N. N had been in his office the night before he died, N had been meeting with him after Jeannie and everyone else had left the office. N had very likely been the last person to see him alive, and most likely the person who had killed him.

N.

I searched farther back. Whoever N was, they were important. For years, that time slot had been when Minirth met with Dr. Reynolds, probably to bitch about me and my squandered potential. Then, all of a sudden, they were all ‘N’ meetings instead.

“Son of a bitch, I’m hungry.” I was drawn from my tracking reverie to see Gentry sprawled in my guest chair, one leg up over the armrest, sucking down his fourth protein shake.

“Suprathyroid gland, you know?” He gave me a look like we were buddies, frat boy best pals, and had been for years. “This thing’s got me super starving, raé. I mean, the doc said it’d be a thing, but I didn’t think it’d be a thing-thing, you feel me?”

My Transys popped up a Sperethiel translation for raé; he’d just called me an elf. Then, even as I deleted that one, it offered me a standard datafile on the side effects of the popular fitness/combat implant, but I swept the infomatic away with an irritated mental gesture. Suprathyroids caused hyperactivity and abnormal dietary increases, particularly when the host-body was first acclimating to it. Every geek with a razorboy wannabe friend knew that.

Not everyone knew that I had another eight cases of CHOCO-PUNCH protein shakes stashed in a closet, taken as payment for a routine spy-and-fry gig, hired to record the indiscretions of a CHOCO-PUNCH distributor’s boyfriend.

“Gentry, I’ve got your hundred nuyen for the commlink gig. I’ll get you all the CHOCO-PUNCH you want if you can hit a system across town for me. I need some camera footage. I know exactly where and I know exactly when. You in?”

“Sure thing, man. But if you want to walk me through what you’re after from a standard sec-feed, it’ll be easier if you piggyback and tell me what to look for.”

“Piggyback?”

“You know, ’trode net and stuff, if you haven’t got a d-jack. I can take you for a ride. You can look, but not touch, peeking over my shoulder like in a third-person shooter, right? We go in hot-sim, fast as fuck, full VR and sharp as can be. I scan the files, when we find what you’re after, you let me know. We’re in, we’re out, you get what you need, I get paid. We all win, raé.”

I wasn’t a fan. I didn’t like the Matrix. I didn’t want to go there. I normally had Trace for that. I’d hired Gentry for that. I hadn’t ever been inside, hadn’t ever wanted to. I certainly wasn’t eager to now, not with some shadowrunner I’d just met, someone who ran with the Alley Cat Express nutjobs, someone who jumped across rooftops for the adrenaline rush. Someone who actually liked CHOCO-PUNCH shakes.

“Yeah.”

But I had to catch N. Had to do right by Minirth. If this was the best way, so be it.

“Yeah, I’m in.”

CHAPTER 13

It was dazzling. It was dizzying. It was terrible.

I hadn’t been so assaulted by colors in years. Even in my dreams, even on the astral plane, things were muted compared to this.

I was in a neon cityscape, all glowing, all crawling with light, all pulsing with data and energy. There wasn’t a filter for it, no dimming background-count from the dreary, hardscrabble existence of Puyallup, no filter option like the cyberoptics I so relied on to turn my life into a movie. It was all color and light and power, all straight lines and right angles, all alien and threatening.

I was a floating pinpoint of nothing just over Gentry’s shoulder. Gentry, meanwhile, was an elven ranger straight out of a video game; hell, maybe literally, he could’ve gotten the code from there, for all I knew. His features were sharper, ears were drawn out and pointed more than any natural elf I’d ever known, his eyes were a bright green that matched his tunic, trousers, and whatever other t-words he was wearing. A black cloak—not just black, really, but like a shadow, a void, a swath of pitch darkness here amidst the neon glare of the Matrix—was slung over his shoulders.

He looked ridiculous.

Gentry moved like he knew what he was doing, though. The neon skyline swept by, certain landmarks looming, inescapable, but he didn’t seem bothered. His digital self—our digital selves?—moved like a fantasy elf in one of Ariana’s cartoons, feet pitter-pattering at absurd speed, icon swooping through the imagined reality as fast as his cyberdeck—a Shiawase Cyber-5, he’d said, like I was supposed to care—could process our navigation. Gentry’d spouted a lot of technobabble before we’d decided to try this, worries about noise, about signal coherence, about wireless latency and bandwidth, static and spam and all sorts of garbage I didn’t know or care about. I’d cut him off with a simple question.

“Can you do it?” I’d asked, sitting in the driver’s seat of my Ford, windows tinted, Ariana on astral overwatch, parked across the street from the University of Washington main campus.

“Oh. Yeah, it’s chill,” he’d said without a doubt in the world.

We’d left Ari to magically manipulate anyone who got too close into leaving—hell if I was getting another parking ticket, much less anything worse—and then Gentry’d busted out slender cables from his deck, and that’d been that. The last thing I’d remembered before the dazzling neon world swept over me was plugging into my datajack and Gentry tapping his touch-screen.

But here we were. He’d darted around lickety-split, dashing from icon to icon until we were snug inside the virtual representation of the U-Dub campus. The buildings were recognizable, icons crafted to remind logged-on users of the campus proper. Some icons were like that; I saw telephone boxes that were probably data terminals, I saw invitingly bright plaques that were basic information dumps, a few other users meandered by all in their own gaudy, ridiculous-looking avatars…it was like a digital dream of campus, college kids sauntering by in their just-barely-acceptably-rebellious icons, a few professors hidden among them, darting from datastore to datastore, all the foot traffic of the campus matched by eager Matrix users.

Gentry’s cloak got drawn up a little tighter, some sort of masking protocol, I guess, and no one seemed to spot us. He didn’t dart from shadow to shadow, just walked boldly through the middle of the digitally pulsing faux-reality, same as I had when Ariana’s invisibility spell had protected me.

The cloak stayed wrapped tight as he walked through the wall of the Grant Landrum building’s icon, just blinked right inside to a neon-bright hallway filled with doors, stretching out before us as far as my imaginary eyes could see.

“We need the security terminal,” I said. The words came out slowly, like my mouth was full of cotton.

“I remember that part,” Gentry said, voice higher pitched, fast-forwarded in comparison to mine.

“What gives?”

“Nothing to worry about, raé, it’s just that hosting and interacting with you is using processing power I normally have allocated elsewhere. The Cyber-5’s a beauty, but I customized her myself, with one-of-a-kind overclocking subroutines and efficiency protocols tailored to my user profile and programming techniques. She’s designed for a very specific set of processes, and your piggybacking is just a little out of sync.”

I wasn’t sure just what to say, and with my sluggish communication times I was worried it’d take too long to curse in any sort of meaningful way. He glided down the hallway for a few more doors, then stopped and wedged into a doorframe, cloak falling shadow-silent and shadow-still.

“You’re like, lagging,” he whispered, otherwise motionless. “Like you’re drunk.”

Oh.

A glowing security guard walked by, all shining U-Dub badge and friendly, recruitment-poster features. His face was unbelievably symmetrical, his hair flawless, his uniform razor-creased. 

“Ice?” It felt like it took me two or three seconds to ask.

“Nice work, detective.”

The security program didn’t seem to hear us communicating, didn’t seem to see or hear us at all, but Gentry gave it a few extra seconds before moving out of the doorway. Intrusion Countermeasures, they were called, or ‘ice’ for short. Subroutines designed to check for legit traffic, wrapped up in a socially-acceptable package, in this case, that let it blend in and not disturb users.

Gentry ghosted past doorway after doorway, until we came to one with, naturally, a large lock in place.

“Now what?”

In the time it took me to ask, digi-Gentry had plucked a gracefully curving bow from out of his cloak, and as the wisp of digital shadow settled back into place from him drawing it, somehow a quiver of arrows appeared over his shoulder.

“You look stupid,” I tried to say, but he was moving too quick for the barb to stick. He drew arrows—one, two, three—with smooth, sure, hands and in just a second all three little shafts were sticking in the chrome-shining lock. They vanished in a wave of pixels, and the door just clicked open.

“You were saying?”

Even without seeing his stupid, sculpted elven-cartoon face from my vantage point, I could tell he was smirking.

He ducked into the security room and drifted over to a data terminal. Another security guard icon sat there, unmoving, unblinking, inhuman. Gentry ignored it, and it seemed totally oblivious to him. He reached out and stuck his hand—jeeze, he even had on a delicately filigreed bracer where his cyberdeck was in real life—right into the terminal, imaginary fingers wiggling.

“Tell me when you see what you’re after,” he said, the nearby guard still unmoving, unnoticing, uncaring. A screen popped to life, and I saw the hallway in front of Dr. Minirth’s office. His room itself wasn’t monitored, but the labs were full of valuable reagents and imported focus items on loan for research, so the hallway was under high-tech scrutiny at all times.

Lucky for us.

My field of vision was consumed by the monitor, and time started playing tricks. Gentry was rewinding, dragging us backwards faster and faster, zipping back through the last few days. It was 11:59 the night of Minirth’s death, 10:59, 9:59. There was no one and nothing on the screen, hallways dark and empty, just the clock scrolling backwards and taking me with it.

“Slow down,” I tried to say, and it worked.

9:00, 8:45, 8:30, 8:15.

“Easy…”

Nothing. 8:00. Still nothing. 7:55, empty hallway. 7:50. I sat, I stared, Gentry worked the clock. 7:30. 7:15. 7:00. 6:45. 6:30.

“Wait,” Gentry said, interrupting my staring. “Look, there.”

6:52:17, there was the tiniest flicker. 

“There. That second, watch it again.” I did, and sure enough, there it was.

“Someone set up a loop. Someone’s been here. Hacked in, and…

Without warning, without anything in the hallway changing even the tiniest bit, it was 7:43:54, in a flicker of thought, and then there was a little blinking sensation again.

“There. They were in for almost an hour. Set things on a loop, to cover their tracks.”

“So what do we do?”

“For starters, I’ve copied that corrupted chunk of file. I can look for it later, check for a signature, see if I can figure out who did it. They were sloppy, and that’s a good sign. Then, though?”

Without me asking, Gentry warped time again. His avatar’s arm twisted—did I imagine the blank-featured U-Dub guard, the IC, shifting his stance just a little?—and suddenly we were looking at camera footage with dozens, maybe hundreds, of people coming and going, walking backwards in a blur. Then empty hallways again, then bustling, then empty, then busy. I thought I might puke. It was a riot of colors, all blurring together, intertwining with one another and their after-images as Gentry rewound faster and faster, as my mind tried to correct for the lack of Sideways, the sharpness brought about by my perpetual WhiteBrite betel chew, as people kept moving the wrong way, zipping in the wrong direction…

“Here we are.” Things slowed down again, moving at just double speed. I felt like I could catch my breath. We were at 8:00 most of a week earlier, scrolling through a Thursday evening. 7:55. 7:50. 7:45.

“No sign of tampering,” Gentry said under his breath, and I worried that the IC might hear.

Christopher Minirth walked across the screen all herky-jerk rewound, jacket on, old-style leather briefcase in his hand, checking his watch as he walked backwards in time to the side hallway his office nestled in. 

“Damn,” I said, not meaning to.

Gentry paused it wordlessly, but with a big, gaudy cartoon question mark appearing over his head. I was left staring at Dr. Minirth, frozen in time, locked in mid-stride, but hale and hearty and looking much the same as he had the last time I’d seen him with my own eyes.

“No, we’re good, kid. I just…that’s him. The vic. Caught me off guard a little, is all.”

Gentry’s digital-cartoon head bobbed, big ears waving, and I thought I saw another file icon swoop around, some image or video being saved just in case I wanted to hold onto it. The rewinding commenced, slower now. Leaving the office just a few minutes before Minirth—“There, pause it, let’s see,” I said, slower than Gentry had paused and zoomed and refined the image already—was, maybe, the bastard we were after.

“Holy Mary, mother of God.”

I hadn’t prayed, really prayed, since maybe the last time my mom had dragged me to Mass. She’d been dead about thirty years now, if that tells you how long it’d been. I almost choked on it, it almost stuck in my throat, almost hurt coming out. But there, in that second, nothing else seemed quite right to say.

There, defiling the hallway of my beloved Grant Landrum building, frozen in high-definition, glancing just right that second toward the camera, one lip curled in a bit of a smirk, was N.

Her street name was Nimbus. She was a petite little Goth girl, swaggered right out of some slumming-it party scene, head to toe in cheap black clothes, torn hose, glossy leather jacket with a few studs and spikes, hair cut crazily and dyed in a few broad purple streaks, skin pale as snow and lips red as blood.

The last time I’d seen her—the only time I’d seen her—she’d torn into my throat with her fangs and sucked most of the life out of me.

The neon dream faded. My vision went black.

CHAPTER 14

“—aid? Kincaid? Can you hear me?”

Walls blurred and buzzed, pulsed with light and data.

“Kincaid? Jimmy? Sersakhan, c’mon, don’t you be dead on me, man.”

I was back over Gentry’s shoulder. Things were less focused than before, little bursts of static interfered here and there. He was running, impossibly fast, down a neon hallway. Stuck hovering behind his field of view, I saw what he saw; when his head turned, the hallway behind us had three guards in it. When he looked to the front again, one loomed, blinking into being out of nowhere in particular.

I tried to shout a warning, but couldn’t. On the bright side, I didn’t need to. Gentry’s bow was back, magic-quick, not there one picosecond, there the next. Two arrows flew at once, drawn and fired in the space of a step, both white-fletched shafts sinking deep into the intrusion countermeasure’s chest. It tumbled backward in a spray of pixels and fraying iconography and Gentry bounded past without missing a beat.

“…Look out,” I managed, well past the action.

“Hey, there you are!” Gentry didn’t look up, just kept running past neon doors with the beat of bootsteps behind us. “You blacked out for a tick. Your biomonitor pinged something in my deck, weird feedback stuff. Adrenal spike, I think. You okay?”

“Peachy.” It felt like I was talking after a dentist’s visit, mouth still numb, words forming slower than ever. Or was Gentry just moving faster than ever?

“Whoops—” He suddenly dropped into a feet-first slide, gliding across the frictionless Matrix-real floor, cloak fluttering behind him as we passed below the outstretched arms of a lunging IC icon. It missed by a hair’s breadth, my field of view only just barely swept beneath it. Gentry was up and running again a split-second later.

“—That was a close ’un,” he said, still upbeat, like he was having the time of his life.

The hallway ended up ahead, impossibly suddenly. Gentry lowered his shoulders to pick up steam, apparently not knowing or caring we’d run out of room. Then his ranger-icon ran three steps up the wall, along the ceiling, backflipping to land behind the trio of just-on-our-asses IC. Before his booted feet hit the ground surface of the digital reality, the bow was out again.

Two arrows flew, drawn back in one shot, and two of the three guards sprouted fletchings and shafts like they’d been designed with them sticking out of their torsos. They were all limned in a glow, I saw up close, wrapped in white like a too-thick border on a drawing. All three—arrow-shot and otherwise—still lurched at Gentry, but he ducked and wove, bobbed and danced away, hands suddenly filled with curved, slender knives, twirling them around and slashing flicker-quick.

Both marked guards dissipated, tumbling to cubes and vanishing into nothingness. The last one came on again, undeterred, and lashed out with one big fist. Gentry ducked, but not quick enough; the club-like arm bashed into his head, and the world went darker, another burst of static washing over my field of vision. As his elven ranger icon reeled from the blow, I saw another guard burst into existence, just behind him/us.

“Huh,” the decker said, like that was completely normal.

“Binders.” He lashed out with his chrome-bright silver blades in a dazzling display. His feet seemed to be moving a little slower, though. One IC fell, the other loomed.

“That’s not good.”

The new guard rushed at him, swinging, but the ranger got away, tumbling backwards just barely out of reach. 

“But it’s also not impossible.”

Instead of returning the attack, he jabbed both knives into what I thought was empty wall—where the hallway just ended—and I saw a crack appear. I heard a footstep behind us, was certain we were about to get bashed again, but suddenly the crack widened or we shrank or both, and we were wedged into it, then through and out the other side.

The digital campus looked mostly the same, but the Grant Landrum building was lit up, glowing like it was on fire, almost. It was some sort of alarm or alert. Gentry’s ranger pulled his night-black cloak up again, hood falling over his Matrix-golden hair, and we walked away.

CHAPTER 15

We were back in my Ford, just like that.

Gentry had an ugly bruise spreading across his face and a trickle of a nosebleed that he licked and swiped away. My Corpsman let me know that I had a few medical irregularities too, but I dismissed the pop-ups. 

“You got it? The file?”

“Sielle.” He nodded. “All set. It was just a little IC. Nothing too hot.”

“All right,” I said, like I cared about the details or understood the Matrix.

I thumbed the Ford to life, and Ariana manifested in the back seat as we pulled away. Gentry saw me scanning the rearview mirrors and shook his head.

“We’re cool. Really. They didn’t run any sort of trace or anything. They were trying to slow me down at the end, but they didn’t pin me down, clearly, or we’d still be in there. They were trying to trap me in the host so they could run a trace, was all.”

“Yeah,” I nodded with him, not really listening, Corpsman still warning me about my blood pressure and heart rate.

“Kincaid, really. We’re in the clear, bro. Relax.”

I gave him a sideways look, and he wised up enough to shut up and stop trying to reassure me. I let the Ford snarl as I shifted gears, creating distance, all the world back in reassuring black-and-white, but me still driving in a fight or flight response like half the world was chasing me.

Thing is, it wasn’t U-Dub security I was worried about. It wasn’t boogeyman Matrix icons. It wasn’t even Knight Errant, who maybe the campus cops would’ve called if they’d tracked us.

It was her. It. N was for Nimbus. The vampire who’d ripped me open and taken away my light and power. The vampire who’d killed my teacher.

I got back to my apartment. I didn’t say much, and if Gentry did, I didn’t hear him. I let him upstairs, let him figure out his own way home with seven of my eight cases of protein shakes—he sure wasn’t gonna be jumping across any fucking roofs, I’ll tell you that—and then I told the whole wide world to fuck off. Ari cleaned up after me as I opened a few bottles and worked really hard at closing my eyes.

CHAPTER 16

I knew I was dreaming because I was young and powerful and the world was in color. Not gaudy neon, with everything glowing against the backdrop of digital nothing, no, just regular color. Color like a normal person sees, like I’d seen as a boy, as a young man, and like I’d first seen through my cyberoptics.

First had come the scholarships, then the academy, then more training, the headware, my induction as a Department of Paranormal Investigations officer, tactical training atop tactical training, honing my physical skills just as they honed my sorcerous ones.

After all, I was a rising star. I was my precinct’s golden boy, soaking up the favor of Divisional Chair Hilary Asenby, who was soaking up the budget of the corporation.

They spared no expense, because they had almost unlimited money. The D.P.I. has always been a gloryhound’s dream job, with less than a tenth the employees of the already-elite Tactical Division, but almost the same budget. Suck it, SWATties. D.P.I.’s where it’s at. Lone Star was invested in them, and the Dips were invested in me.

I’d thought the sky was the limit, but it turned out it was the sewers instead.

I dreamed my way through the briefing again. I was tactical Hermetic support to the Fast Response Team being sent on a simple, ugly, sweep-and-geek mission. SWAT wasn’t involved, FRT was, because there weren’t any hostages to protect. There weren’t any arrests to be made. There was a filthy pack of ghouls eating people, and that was that. We were performing a community service in accordance with our contract, D.P.I. Paranormal Animal Control had tracked down the Krieger-infected nasties, and they’d tapped a Fast Response kill-team—and me, the up-and-comer—to go clean house.

I dreamed about the ride over, boisterous and eager in the belly of our CityMaster. We were all suited up, each and every one of us wrapped head to toe in heavy-tac armor, heads-up smart helmets strapped on, locked and loaded, ready to rock and roll. Every other man and woman in the back had a Ruger Thunderbolt, I packed my graduation present Colt 2061. We bristled with long-guns, though, sidearms be damned. Lone Star’s standard tactical loadout had been modified for the close quarters kill zone: six shooters had sleek Heckler & Koch 227s, five of them CMDT assault shotguns.

Me? I had my spells, and my big gun was Ariana. Fresh from my Master’s thesis, she was gorgeous. Flawless. Resilient as stone, beautiful as a diamond, powerful as my ego. I’d boasted to the rest of the kill-team I wouldn’t need them or her, had warned ’em to stand behind me so I could just let loose down there, had laughingly ordered her to the Astral so I could brag to my friends about the havoc I was going to personally wreak.

I dreamed it all again, the insanity of looking forward to disembarking, the madness of how gung-ho we all were. How hungry for glory. How eager.

I dreamed of darkness, lit only by cones from underbarrel flashlights, a darkness so thick cyberoptics didn’t quite work right, a darkness so cold we felt it through our armor.

I dreamed of claws in the dark, leering faces, hairless skulls with pale eyes, wrapped in sickly-grey skin, yellow teeth and yellow claws, both slick with blood all too quick.

I dreamed of gunshots ringing through tunnels, the screams of the dying, the spells—god damn those spells—coming at us out of nowhere. I poured my power into attacking instead of defending, determined that the best defense was a good offense, dedicating myself to lashing out with waves of acid and balls of lightning, bolts of fire and spearing laser-bright lances of pure energy. 

I dreamed my heads-up display started to show FRT troopers dying, almost faster than I could keep up. Ariana screamed for me to let her help, but then I saw her, saw it, saw the creature I’d come to know by the name Nimbus.

She came on me too fast. She laughed, fangs red, white-painted skull on her face smeared with crimson, arms bloody up to the elbows, and when I tried to blast her with a bolt of power she took the hit and lunged at me anyway, her chest a burned, smoking ruin.

I dreamed she tore my throat out and fed on my blood and fear. To a vampire, the blood was just the vector; it was life force they fed on, pure energy, mana, power, soul.  Slow-aging elf or not, she sucked away my light. She took my brightness. She stole my spirit.

I couldn’t muster up coherence and reason in the face of that, couldn’t think my way out of a situation I hadn’t thought myself into. I couldn’t put together two plus two, much less muster up the appropriate collegiate formula, much less solve this equation.

I dreamed she laughed and danced and splashed in the guts of my team while I lay there, gurgling, hoping I’d die.

Ari ran and got help, since my joking order had still kept her from properly manifesting. Quick as fear, she rushed to the precinct house, got the attention of the on-duty astral overwatch officer, and showed him what was happening.

They got there just in time. My power was almost gone, almost broken. My team was dead, and I was minutes away from joining them.

I dreamed it all in color, in clear view, without the filter of my cyberoptics to remove me from it, without the unreality of their display to hold the memories at arm’s length.

Nimbus, her name was. Nimbus.

CHAPTER 17

I awoke feeling terribly unrested, but full of grim determination.

I wasn’t going to make the same mistakes I had all those years ago. Back then, I’d had a full Lone Star team on my side. I’d had substantial rank, and with it broad access to the resources of the world’s premier law enforcement agency, all their tech and toys, all their men, all my power—and I’d lost anyway.

This time was going to be different. This time I’d stack the deck so far in my favor it’d make a Vegas dealer blush. This time, the way I saw it, I had Jackpoint. That was better. Every shadowy expert in the world was at my beck and call, sort of. Hard Exit would help. Hard Exit had to. She was one of Jackpoint’s favorites

Hard Exit made calls for me. Hard Exit told me when to expect some nova-hot vampire-killing consultant she knew. Hard Exit joked that I owed her one, and then her voice softened and the street name vanished while my friend, Jessica, wished me luck.

“I’m halfway around the world, Mitch, or I’d be there,” she said, and I knew she was telling the truth. She owed me, even though I’d never tell her that. She felt like she owed me still, from all those years ago.

“I know, Jess. It’s okay. You’re doing plenty.” I mustered up a rusty smile for the trid, then hung up.

He was supposed to be some sort of expert on vampire psychology and parabiology. Some specialist in the HMHVV, Human-Metahuman Vampiric Virus, and the monsters it created. Some big-shot hunter who’d killed dozens or hundreds of the things. Some world-class genius in the art and science of destroying the Infected. Someone with a deep understanding of their flaws, their weaknesses, the sort of attacks that could bypass their innate recuperative abilities, ways to beat them despite their tremendous physicality and dangerous natures.

Hey, if he was eager enough to help some vampires get killed that he was gonna arrange transportation for a personal consultation, I wasn’t going to turn it down.

I had hours to kill, ’cause her expert’s suborbital flight wasn’t arriving at Sea-Tac until almost midnight, so I settled in with my old chipsoft lecture about some very specific detection spells. Dr. Reynolds himself had uploaded them to the Hermetic Order’s digital library, the grimoire we could all access from the safety of our personal wizard chambers. Detect vampire. I read. I studied. I learned, and Ari soaked it up like the magical sponge she was, right next to me.

“No vampires,” she helpfully piped up about three times a minute while practicing. It was a radar-type spell, centered on the spellcaster, and it let you know if anything fitting the formula’s specifications—HMHVV infected with the Ghilany Vrykolakivididae strain, folks we called sanguisuga europa, or “vampires”—was within range. That spell, cast and re-cast by Ariana, was going to be my eyes and ears for the foreseeable future. I gave her strict orders, the very opposite of the ones I’d stupidly given her all those years ago. Ari was going to constantly check for vampiric skullduggery, she was going to lay into any vampires she ever found with it, and that was that. Problem solved.

I won’t get blindsided again, I told myself.

And then, the Sixth World being the Sixth World, I did anyway.

A convertible Eurocar Westwind luxury coupe—big money, those—parked out front and a Manhattan-slick suit clambered out, checked his commlink with a disappointed shoulder slump, and then walked into my building. Ariana bebopped around the apartment, practicing her spellcasting, and I watched his crisp lines and slick hair as he headed up past my cheap security cameras to the office door. He paused to knock, I casually hollered for him to enter, still sitting at my desk.

He looked efficient. Businesslike. Professional. Wealthy. Slender and fit. I expected an Infected hunter to be more brawny, more clearly threatening, but I knew there were other kinds of strength. I had a few seconds to get a quick impression of him, and I liked what I saw. I felt like he could help me. I felt confident. I felt like we had a shot.

Then Ariana finished another practice-casting, and all the shit hit all the fans at once.

“Vampire!” she howled, voice full of girlish rage.

“Ally Spirit?” the New York businessman hissed in response, accent anything but New York.

“What?” I said stupidly, kicking my feet off my desk and sitting up straight.

Ari rushed him like an avalanche, nails sharp as flint and leading the way. Illusions slithered off his body, but the suit remained, and even as I clawed my wand from my hip and flung up my own detect vampire spell—just making sure I wasn’t about to kill someone because Ari’d childishly screwed up the casting, somehow—my headware started in on a facial recognition subroutine.

He and Ariana were all tangled up while my wand warmed in my hand and I confirmed his status as Infected. She raked him with her claws, all in a blur, and he bared his fangs and fought to throw her off him. I dropped the detection spell and flung a probing bolt of mana just as the Transys in my skull matched his face to a half dozen news reports.

Martin de Vries, bestselling author, vampire hunter, conspiracy nut, and—apparently—vampire, reached out with an open hand and batted my spell out of the air like it was nothing. He made it look as easy as I did. His other hand palmed Ariana’s face to shove her away and he struck a pose, for just a moment, giving me a disappointed look at the lack of power in my first attack of the fight.

Right on cue, while he was smirking at me with those fangs twinkling in amusement, Ariana slammed into him with the same spell, multiplied several times over. Pure power. Raw force. A bolt of mystic destruction. His suit shredded and smoldered as his magical defenses were rent through, now there was genuine anger on his face as he turned on her.

He spat and hissed at her in Latin, the air rippled around him, and then there was a flash of light and an explosion.

She can’t die, I told myself as I got back to my feet and saw the empty air where she’d been.

She can’t die, she’s a spirit, all he could do is banish her, I thought as I vaulted over my desk at him.

She can’t die, she can just be banished, I insisted as I leaped at him.

My tackle caught him just right, textbook-flawless form, but it felt like I was trying to take down a hundred-year oak. He didn’t budge, just let me smash into him and bounce off.

She can’t die. He opened his mouth to say something, and I wrapped my fist around my wand and mana around my fist, hitting him in the jaw with the best left hook of my life, doing my best to kill him with a spell channeled directly through the physical contact. The magic discharged and his head turned, cheek smoldering.

De Vries’ smirk disappeared, and he reached up to catch my next punch. His palm smoked as I growled Enochian curses at him, and he clenched down. My Sideways didn’t let it hurt, but I felt bones breaking. Snap, crackle, pop. My Corpsman let me know there were more than 27 bones in my left hand now. When he relaxed his grip, my wand clattered to the ground. 

She can’t die. I hauled back and punched him again, mana cushioning my right fist and pouring death into my touch. It rocked him back, so I went for it again, stepping into it properly this time. He blocked it, almost too fast for me to see, and gave me an open-handed slap that felt like a sledgehammer against my face.

“She can’t die,” I said to him out loud.

He reached out to pluck me by the lapels and lift me off the floor as easily as he would an unruly child.

“Perhaps. But you can,” Martin de Vries said, fangs catching the light just so. “So let’s stop this, shall we?”

I reached for my hip with my good right hand. He gave me a little ragdoll shake and shook his head, my wingtips dangling centimeters from the ground.

“Your gun won’t help you, detective.”

“My gun isn’t what I’m goin’ for.”

I stuck my little tactical folding knife, a weapon focus if not a powerful one, square into his gut. Poke, poke, poke, a simple, brutal, prison-rush type of shanking. In and out, in and out, sewing-machining my way up his side, then wedging it in between a few ribs when I found a gap. His eyes widened in rage and pain while I gave it a twist; he answered by snarling at me in anger, and then just flicked his fingers like they were wet and I was a drop of water.

The main window of my office shattered as I flew backward through it, and the slivers of glass caught every beam of light in the world as I hung there in space for a second. My Sideways was in overdrive as I tried to claw at anything and everything to keep from falling, but there was nothing to grab but the million shards of glass that twinkled like stars. 

The moment passed. My coat snapped in the wind as I fell.

“Vpaah,” I said around a mouth full of bloody teeth. Enochian for wing, it was the trigger word I used for my levitation spe—

I slammed into a parked car after my three-story drop, triggering airbags and impact-foam dispensers that tangled me up, but did keep me from dying on impact. All the air got blasted right out of me, and I struggled—snarling, frantic—to tear myself free from the torn cloth convertible top, a seatbelt somehow wrapped around one ankle, the shreds of airbags all around me, the fading echoes of their deployments ringing in my ears. Splayed out with a gearshift in my back and my broken left hand halfway through a dashboard, I looked up and saw de Vries hovering outside my office window, eyes blazing with power and sneering down at me like an angry god. 

He pointed, and a ball of fire leapt from his hand.

“Ag. Agagag!”

I clambered and twisted and fell out of the car and into the pavement, glass crunching beneath me. The vampire-cast fireball from on high smashed into the car right after, and it took all my counterspelling expertise to keep the near-miss from frying me alive. I was protected, but I still felt the flames lick at me as bits of car rained down all around. I peeled off my smoldering jacket and threw it, never quite making it back to my feet, and then crawled after it while flames still clung to one of its sleeves.

My Sideways and my Transys Avalon conspired against me, counting the pieces of window, helpfully reminding me of how much it had cost to get the glass repaired last time, estimating damages for this most recent accident, and letting me know that my Corpsman had twelve urgent messages for me to review about my current medical condition.

“Whoof.”

I spat blood as I crawled through the Puyallup ash, head turning, cyberoptics focusing crazily through a concussion, tagging and counting neighborhood cars all up and down the street and politely reminding me I could remotely activate my Ford Americar if I wanted to start the air conditioning prior to my arrival. I looked down and my optics locked onto a twisted piece of metal that rained from on high, the license plate of the car I’d landed on and he’d blown up. I craned my neck to look up and saw de Vries floating down slowly, leisurely, hellishly lit from below by the fire he’d started. 

I knew he was going to kill me—knew I was going to die to a vampire—if I let him stay mad. I couldn’t have that.

I caught up to my still-burning suit jacket and reaching inside to recover my battered pack of Targets. I hauled out an unbroken one and used the jacket to get it lit. By the time de Vries deigned to touch the ground and walk over to finish me off, I was half-propped up against the far curb, blowing smoke his way with a terrible plan in my head.

I mean, really terrible. But it was the best one I had.

He stood there, looking down on me, face a mask of vampiric arrogance, my pocket knife still sticking out of his ribs, suit ruined, backlit by the merrily burning car. I sent up mental commands to shove away biomonitor updates and the still-running facial recognition protocols; I wanted a clear view. He lifted one hand and started whispering in Latin—again, with the Latin—his finger pointed at me like the barrel of a gun.

“I win,” I said, when I could manage a proper lungful of air around my Target.

His voice caught in his throat.

“…what?”

My head lolled heavily on my neck, exhausted even if the Sideways wouldn’t let me feel sore, and I chuckled deep in my belly.

“I win. You lose. I beat you. James Kincaid one, Mr. Big Shot Martin de Vries zero. How many ways I gotta say it?”

“You…” His features softened just a bit, not quite so monstrously sharp now. Those fangs glittered a bit less brightly, those eyes looked almost human.

“I beat you. Yup. Sorry, pal, but there’s no need to be a sore loser about it.”

I lay on the ground, scorched and blackened, bleeding, my best friend banished, my office a wreck, my suit on fire next to me in the gutter, broken, battered, thrown from my own window. 

Triumphant.

“You, sir, are mad.” That accent of his dripped through again, and I tried to remember where he was from. The Netherlands? My Transys spun up and thought about recovering my research tabs, but I ignored it.

“Maybe, but I’m a winner and you’re a loser.”

He reached down and effortlessly plucked my knife from his side, letting it clatter into the filthy Puyallup gutter next to me. He tore open his shirt and showed me his side, where a quick healing spell was already knitting the wound shut. His innate vampiric regeneration didn’t heal magical attacks, but a spell could, and did.

Fuckin’ show off.

“If you’re referring to this, detective, you are sorely mistaken. As you can see, it was a trifling scratch. You…I’m barely hurt, and you’re…how…”

Ha! Speechless. Take that, shadowy legend.

“How is it that you believe you’ve possibly won? In what way? In what world is this some sort of…of…victory for you?”

The madness was gone from his voice. His canines were back to normal. His accent was thick, but human. Incredulous. Curious. Normal. Alive. Sane.

I shifted in my gutter, blowing smoke at him, then grinned.

“Because that—” I nodded at the burning wreckage, trying not to laugh. “—was your rental Westwind.”

When he started laughing, I figured he wasn’t out to kill me right then.

CHAPTER 18

Martin de Vries hauled me to my feet easily, effortlessly, careful to grab my proffered right hand, not my broken left one. 

“I am very sorry about this,” he said, almost sheepishly. I had the whole thing recorded, but the hangdog look on his face right then was extra priceless.

“I started it.” Or, rather, Ariana had, on my orders.

“Yes, but I should…I should have shown more restraint. This mess will be difficult to cover up.”

His car was scattered all over the street, the main chassis still burning away. Car alarms on both sides were going off from the explosion, my apartment window was destroyed, the Thai joint on the ground floor had some busted glass too, and all up and down the block lights were—pointedly—being turned off as folks tried not to draw attention to themselves while they peeked out windows, curious and afraid.

“We don’t cover up here.” I shook my head, immediately regretting it as a wave of dizziness crashed over me.

He was some silly-rich bestselling author on top of everything else, right? My headware kept trying to show me news articles about him, which I studiously ignored, a reading list I blinked away, but then some sales figures that I glanced at.

“I’ll smooth it over with the cops if you smooth it over, y’know, financially.”

“I can manage that, yes.”

Of course he could, the prick.

He started pouring mana into me—knitting me back up, as handy with the healing mojo as Ariana—as we headed for the door. I gave a big, reassuring wave to the neighborhood in general, and apartment lights started coming back on, tridsets were un-muted, and probably more than a few firearms were put back down.

De Vries gestured, and a water elemental appeared over the burning wreckage of his rental car. He made it look so easy, for a second I hated him again. The spirit—a classic Hermetic design, half-cresting wave, half-humanoid figure—descended onto the fire, and put it out even as I made a call.

“Tillie.” My Transys dialed the local precinct house. Tillman was on duty—why’d my life always turn to a train wreck on third shifts?—like always, Knight Errant’s best and brightest and likeliest to be stuck working the night shift.

“Goddammit, Kincaid,” he said, cheerful as ever. “What the hell’s going on over there?”

“Tillie, it’s fine. You may’ve gotten a few calls—”

“A few?!”

“—about a magical scuffle. It’s taken care of. There was a…a…mystical assault in my office. Rogue spirit. Bad juju. I got thrown clear, then the fight moved outside, is all. We took care of it. Free spirit’s gone, no one’s hurt. Some property damage, but my buddy’s gonna pay for everything.”

Yes, yes he was.

“You’re killin’ me, Jimmy. You’re reachin’ into my head and pokin’ my brain, and you’re friggin’ killin’ me.”

“I’m killin’ you? I just got attacked by a rogue spirit, I try to do my civic duty to call it in all official-like, and you’re gonna bust my balls about it, Tillman? Fine. Hey. You got my fifty nu, Till? I’m gonna start charging interest, you don’t get me that fifty. I tell you not to bet on the Screamers, I tell you and I tell you, and you—”

“Don’t change the subject, you prick! I’ve got a dozen friggin’ calls here, about a fire or something, and…and…okay, like nine or ten calls, some sort of car on fire, and now it’s like four, but…all right, dammit, lines are dead and PANICBUTTONs are going off-line, but this’s still gotta go in the logbook, Jimmy.”

“That’s fine, that’s fine. Log whatever you gotta log. Oh, and hey, put in a call to Black’s, tell ’em there’s some pieces of car they can probably take. Westwind. Not much to it, but scrap’s scrap, right?”

“I’ll get you that fifty nuyen, Jimmy. You know I’m good for it,” Tillman’s voice turned a little toward a whine, and I knew he’d heard about my recent visits to the Gianellis, over at Salvo’s joint. He was worried about my collecting, now that he thought I was in their pocket. Fine. Let the neighborhood draw the wrong conclusions, I didn’t have time to clear it up right now.

“I know, Tillie. I know.”

I gave the block another little wave—left-handed, this time, all knitted up good as new—and watched as de Vries released his frolicking water spirit.

Potential law enforcement crisis averted, we headed back inside.

CHAPTER 19

It was a long night. An informative night. Martin de Vries had a lot of good info—on his person, luckily, not stowed in his Westwind’s glovebox—and he freely shared it. He liked people that liked killing vampires. He hated them as deeply as I did, I think, his own disease notwithstanding.

I’ve got nothing against the Infected, just for the record. I understand that the HMHVV gets people sick. I understand it’s a magical thing, a terrible virus, an illness, not a lifestyle choice. But they’ve got to understand it, too, the folks sick with it. The folks who have it, that fight against it? Folks like de Vries, who work hard to maintain their control, to use the disease as a weapon against the sickos, to hold onto their humanity? I’ve got no beef with them. None. Hell, I respect ’em. But there are Infected out there that embrace it, that let it define them, let it turn them into monsters. There are folks out there who get their brain chemistry all out of whack from the HMHVV, who love how it makes them feel, who let it turn them dangerous, predatory, monstrous. If you don’t take care of yourself, and because of that, you start to hurt other people? Then we’ve got a problem.

I recorded our conversation, filed away the data he shared, planning to review it in more detail later. He went over the different strains of the HMHVV—some of it was stuff I hadn’t even heard of before, despite my personal interest—and the history of the research into the virus. He reminded me that their strengths can be weaknesses, told me—with more than a little sadness and disgust at himself—how the virus can turn someone feral, wild, keep them from thinking straight. He reminded me that the Infected—proper vampires, not ghouls with the Krieger strain—were often dangerous, predatory spellcasters. He gave me an insider’s feel for their allergies, the things that scared them, that hurt them, information more personal than any paranormal guide. He shared good information, information I could use.

I had trouble listening, was the thing.

I missed Ari. I was used to her being around, used to always having that mental link tugging at me, used to having her perspective, not just my own. I needed her energy. Her enthusiasm. Her optimism. All the best parts of me went into her, and now they were gone. I listened to Martin, sure, but I was angry the whole time. Sullen. Distracted. I knew what I had to do to get her back, I knew the way to retrieve a disrupted spirit. He confirmed it for me, too, sensing my frustration. He was—just ask his Eurocar Westwind—a skilled magi, of course, not just a vampire hunter, and he knew about metaplanar quests just as much as I did.

We finished up talking about the Infected, though, as I did my best not to worry about Ari.

Going on five in the morning, he excused himself. I didn’t try to stop him.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Kincaid, but I must be away. I need time, still, to find myself a place to stay for the day, and suitable transportation in the meantime.”

“Yeah, cabbies’re gonna rake you over the coals,” I said, maybe enjoying it a little. “Some of ’em don’t even come to Puyallup, y’know.”

“Quite.”

He stood there, this predator of predators, this perfectly evolved killing machine, and stretched out a hand for me to shake.

Aww, maybe he wasn’t so bad, first impressions notwithstanding.

“Call me if you have need of me, detective, and I will come as my schedule permits. I have other business here to attend to, I’ve been out of Seattle for some time, but I’m always looking for dedicated hunters to assist me. The Guild and I, we have…a duty. A responsibility. Protecting people from others like me, it’s something I need to do.”

“I know.” And I did. I only shouldered Puyallup, he was trying to hold up the whole damn world. “I know the feeling. Hey, listen. Before you go—I know, I know, sun-up and all, but it’ll be quick—I just need one favor. A really small one, yeah?”

I had him take care of one last thing for me, then he left.

I stripped down to my shirtsleeves and ransacked the apartment finding myself something to help me get some rest. I had to sleep. I wanted to get Ari back—I had to, sooner rather than later—but that sort of thing wasn’t ever easy, wasn’t ever safe, and doing it tired-to-the-bone wouldn’t do me or her any favors.

“First thing when I get up, kiddo,” I toasted the empty room with a half-full bottle of a black-label import I’d picked up, cheap, last time I’d made a Stuffer Shack run. I left the bottle cap on my desk, I knew I’d be emptying it, not saving any for later.

There, amid all the clutter, was a book. An actual book, like Reynolds and Minirth and other old-timers kept, not just an electronic reader or a commlink full of text files, but paper and ink and weathering and wrinkles and words. Something special. A book. Shadows at Noon was the first in de Vries’ bestselling series, and Trace had lent it to me—over Skip’s complaining reluctance—years ago. His stuff was some of their favorite. Sometimes I’m a shitty friend, so I still hadn’t read it, despite their urging.  

But I had just gotten it signed for them.

From hunter to hunter, he’d scribbled in his bold, spidery hand, Keep up the good work.  –MdV.

Someday I’d give it to them, but tonight I had other plans.  I drank until I slept, lulled to sleep not just by the alcohol and the exhaustion, but by the sounds of the city. Puyallup and my apartment blurred into one with the windows broken open.

It helped.

CHAPTER 20

It was noon before a particularly cold draft blew in and woke me. A steady drizzle was falling, which helped keep the ash down—small favor, otherwise the apartment’d be an even bigger mess—but the incoming cold front carried a chill with it, and I fought a shiver as I grabbed a leftover protein shake to wash the hangover out of my mouth and put something into my stomach.

In boxers, an undershirt, and stubble, I contemplated the broken glass, the backsplash, the mess I should’ve cleaned up, or had Martin de Vries help me clean up, the night before. Fuck. He’d left a credstick and an apology, that would do for a start, but hiring someone to come in would make it impossible to work on what I had to work on next; getting Ariana back.

“You know…” I slumped into my desk chair, the seat damp from where the morning’s light rain had splashed in. “The really terrible thing is, I might die doing this.”

Astral quests weren’t cakewalks. They were Initiate-only stuff, high mojo, arcane secrets. Spirit-walks weren’t safe, and a return was never guaranteed. My body would sit here until I got back into it, and maybe that would just never happen, and no one would ever know what’d happened to Jimmy Kincaid, or why. Or care.

“I don’t even know who to talk to about it.

“When I was young, my dad gave me these rules. Simple ones. Classics. Don’t take a swing for no reason, treat girls like they deserve to be treated, drive safe, tip your waitress. Guy stuff, too, not just life stuff. Don’t cheat at sports, do a good job, show up to work early.”

I spun my chair, turning away from my desk; it wasn’t powered up, I wasn’t talking to anyone, there wasn’t a call active. The window welcomed me, the Puyallup breeze cut deep. I looked out over my city.

“I’ve done my best. Been a straight shooter, told the truth when it wouldn’t hurt good people. I haven’t stolen, not really. I’ve done right by my employers, always. Tried to play fair. I haven’t had very many rules—I don’t like ’em, world, you know that—but I’ve stuck by the ones that matter. Not ‘by the book,’ no, but doing right. That’s…that’s what I’ve tried to do. I bled and I’ve killed and I’ve fought for this city my whole life, badge or no, power or no. I’ve tried, done my best, like my old man was always watching.”

I had a headware computer full of contacts. Full of acquaintances. Full of coworkers, or stoolies, or clients. I knew every fence in Puyallup, half the prostitutes, most of the bartenders. I knew the Knight Errant guys assigned to the parts of Puyallup they bothered to be assigned to, I knew capos like Enzo and dons like Joseph Gianelli, I knew oyabuns like Tomizawa and gang-lords like Belial.

I knew everyone. And yet I didn’t have anyone to talk to, because my imaginary friend was tucked away on another plane of existence.

“And what the fuck’ve I got to show for it, huh?

“My best friend, maybe my only real friend, is a spirit. A sliced-off part of me, all the parts I used to have, all the things I used to be. An appendage, and one that just got taken from me. So here I am, naked, hungover, tired as hell, tracking down a killer the city doesn’t care about, and I’m going to—get this, world—I’m going to throw my astral self away, all up through the metaplanes, to try and get her back.”

I threw my arms wide, let my head loll back, kicked my bare feet up on the windowsill like it wasn’t full of rainwater and glass, like all of Puyallup was my work-desk.

“And I don’t even have anyone to say goodbye to.”

A part of me wanted to laugh about it. A part of me wanted to throw a fireball out the window just on principle.

“So, hey world. Hey Puyallup. Hey, all you husbands and wives that pay my rent ’cause you get cheated on, all you parents with runaways I’ve tracked down for you, all you offices with wards I’ve put up, neighborhoods with monsters I’ve killed, working girls with pimps I stopped, murderers I’ve put away. All you cops I’ve helped up or put down, gang-bangers I’ve tried to work with, all you two-bit no-good skells I’ve beat on…”

I sighed, hauling myself to my feet.

“Ol’ Jimmy Kincaid says goodbye, if you don’t see him again.”

I left the hole in the wall and tossed my crumpled-up protein shake carton toward the garbage—a miss—and just turned my back. I needed my library right now, not my office.

Except for the meticulously flawless circle in the center of the room, my library looked like a hoarder’s dive. It was everything I’d found, basically ever, that had to do with magic. For over a dozen years I’d been gathering whatever knowledge I could find, keeping the trinkets dropped by magically active skells, trading favors for knowledge, finding what worked for me, and working it as best I could. I didn’t have my old power, no, but I had plenty of tricks, all the same, and a half-dozen different ways to do everything I knew to do.

Straining shelves lined the walls, full of dusty old tomes, rolled up scrolls, Nordic rune stones, and a few actual clay tablets. Datasoft chips were haphazardly shelved next to translation guides, hardcopy print-outs of Hermetic journals were stacked next to bead patterns that told tribal stories, texts of biblical lore rested alongside cheap, old pocket secretaries laden with video files showing Aztec blood rituals. I had texts from Bruce Lee and Club Amsterdam, Ehran the Scribe and Dunkelzahn, the Hawkins Group and the Society of Elemental Studies, and dozens more writers and organizations.

This room, and what I did in it, was one of my dirtiest secrets. It’s what Dr. Minirth had known and accepted about me, what Dr. Reynolds had—however briefly—tried to hold over my head. Despite my card-carrying membership in the Hermetic Order of the Auric Aurora, I wasn’t actually a Hermetic spellcaster. Not any more.

I’d dropped the fancy formula, dropped the conceit of understanding this art like it was a science, dropped the pretension of insisting physics could explain what Talent can do. When Nimbus had taken my power from me, I’d looked elsewhere to try and get it back. I’d tried chemical cocktails to numb the loss, I’d tried Better Than Life chips to pretend it never happened, I’d turned to a street doc and Sideways to take away the pain, I’d tried to find that old spark—hell, I was still trying—at the bottom of a bottle.

Only magic could replace magic, though.

I stopped limiting myself to the Hermetic tradition, and embraced the idea of just doing whatever worked. 

The Order didn’t really trust me, didn’t really want me, because I was a Black magician, in the old school. Not this new stuff that’d cropped up in the last few years, flashy kids with flashy magic, all about tits and blood and fucking your way to mastery. Not the mustachio-twirling villains of Karl Kombatmage trid-shows, either, doing evil for evil’s sake.

To me—and as a Black magician, only my definition of it mattered—Black was about the will to power. It was about taking what you could, holding onto it, and not letting anyone else take it away from me, ever again. It was about flexibility, doing what got the job done, and browbeating magic into doing what you needed it to.

I’d never been the sort to reason my way into spellcasting, even when I was a student, even when I’d called myself a Hermetic. It wasn’t logic that brought me my power, it was will. Force of personality. Stubbornness, the insistence that scientific laws didn’t matter, me wanting to throw a lightning bolt did, the knowledge that a spirit’s desire to stay on their home plane was secondary to my desire, my ability, to drag them here.

That’s why, that’s how I did what I did. That’s why I could use a voodoo doll, a Hermetic formula, and a Buddhist chant all at the same time to make a ritual work. That’s why I had a dowsing rod, an athame, and a golden cross all piled together on my rickety ritual table.

I did what worked, leaned on whatever could get the job done for me. My magical philosophy was simple, direct, and honest, no matter what Reynolds might think.

This sort of thing took time and concentration. Shutting the study door behind me, I lit candles, eschewing electricity for the formality of the moment, the ritual of it. I stripped down to my shirtsleeves and sat in the middle of the circle.

Disrupted spirits returned to their home planes. A metaplanar quest would get her back. All I had to do was leave Puyallup behind, focus on her, and I’d be back in business.

I thought about Ari, as hard as I could, as focused as I’d been since the day I dreamed her into being all those years ago. I chanted in Enochian, in Sperethiel, Latin, and a half-dozen other languages. I closed my eyes, and fell away from my body. A blue-white ghost of me appeared on the Astral, all surrounded by the murky unreality of the spirit side of my apartment.

I ignored the background count, ignored the astral aftertaste of my own home, of the things I kept on shelves within it. I looked down and saw my body, a worthless hunk of meat more dead than alive from this side of the mirror, and then I closed my eyes.

“Ariana, I named thee. Ariana, I will find thee. Ariana, I come for thee.”

Whatever works, I try.

It worked. The Astral plane fell away.

CHAPTER 21

When I opened my eyes, I knew nothing I saw was real. Like the Matrix, in a way; space stretched out before me, infinite in all directions, as pitch black and unreal as the vastness of that digital skyline.

I focused. I wished. I pushed past it.

There.

My mind strove to reach the plane of earth, but I knew where I had to go first.

Go there.

There was a pinpoint of light in the distance, the only thing there was to look at, to focus on, to drag myself toward. I went.

In an eyeblink—take that, Gentry’s fancy Cyber-5, now who’s fast?—I was there. The featureless black void became a featureless white room, white walls, white floor, white ceiling. Blindingly white. Perfectly white. The idea of white.

And I knew who’d be waiting for me there, at the junction, the doorway to the higher planes, at the Threshold.

“Hullo, Watcher,” I saw the shadow of someone, just the profile, and waited for them to turn. The Dweller on the Threshold was a monster, or maybe an angel, or maybe a figment of our spellcasting collective imagination. It was a thing you had to get past, a fear you had to conquer, a secret you had to confront, a pain you had to endure. It was the worst sort of spirit guide, and it threw itself at anyone who tried to go on an astral quest.

The first time I’d faced the Watcher, it had looked like my old man. It had beat me silly, said it was ashamed of me, said I was a coward, said it’d never loved me. Swinging back hadn’t worked. I’d had to call it a liar for it to vanish, and my quest to succeed.

The second time, it’d been my mom. I don’t like to think about it.

“Who’ve we got this time, huh?”

I figured the best way to get it over with was confidence. Honesty. To go into the Threshold believing in yourself. I bitched sometimes, sure, but I never doubted that I was right. This had to be the right path.

“Hullo, Jimmy,” I heard my own voice come back at me, saw my face as the longcoat-clad figure turned, face dark under a dirty fedora, shadows cast away as it lit up a smoke.

“Shit.”

It laughed at me, the Dweller on the Threshold with my stubble, my eyes, my meanness.

“Jesus, Jimmy, would you look at you? Running errands for Reynolds, that prick who’d never liked you and who you never liked. The ThD who thought you couldn’t cut it, who always pushed you, always made you work harder. The bean-counter for the lodge, the one with all the rules and paperwork who made you work on your sad little ally-formula over and over again.”

I stayed quiet. The Dweller wasn’t here to listen to me, it was here to hurt me. To test me. I figured if I shut up, it’d be over with more quickly.

“Running errands for Reynolds, that is, when you’re not chasing drunks and losers, and camouflaging yourself perfectly to fit in with them, huh? Very nice work with the Don, by the way. Cripes, if Dad could see you now, am I right? It’s a miracle you didn’t trip on your way out of Sunny Salvo’s, lynchpin of the Gianelli empire in Puyallup, the way you ran out with your goddamn tail between your legs.”

I gritted my teeth, but didn’t rise to the bait.

“Oh, but hey, way to pump those contacts before that, though. Beating the shit out of a punk kid, that really showed ol’ Enzo, didn’t it? I can’t help but notice you didn’t try to cast a single spell. Why is that, Jimmy? Not sure if it’d still work? Didn’t want to embarrass yourself when an amateur-hour knucklehead like that countered your mojo as easily as you countered his?”

The Dweller sauntered toward me, walking slow, savoring my frustration, my rage, the impotence of both. It blew smoke right in my face; harsh, rough smoke, not the mellow, minty overtones of my favorite brand.

“You’re pathetic, Jimmy. Weak. Nothing. You let the Gianellis run you out of a little kid’s pizza joint. You almost died to a bunch of crazy trolls—super subtle ones, I’ll give you that—and needed a bunch of two-bit gangbanger FantasyLand elves to save you. You blacked out like a scared child when you went on your little digital ride-along. The best work you’ve done all week is running down a degenerate in a titty bar, and then letting him fucking go, Jimmy. Look at you. You let a fucking leech throw you out your own window, then you brought him back into your place and asked him for help.”

The Dweller shook my head at me, tsk’ing softly.

“A leech, Jimmy. A parasite, a scavenger! That’s what vampires are, and you know it. You should know it. You know why? Not because one bit you, once—boo hoo, cry some more—but because that’s what you are, too. For all that you bitch about the mob and the Yaks and all the gangs being parasites, what do you think you are, huh?

“You don’t solve a damned thing. You bark at shadows, you chase your tail, you shit where you eat. You’re just a jackal, a mutt, eating the scraps your shitty home town tosses you sometimes. You’re as much a scavenger as any vampire, Jimmy. You roll corpses. You don’t pay your bills like a normal damned grown-up. You waste money on booze and time on moping around brooding while your city turns to shit around you and your friends take off to get away from you. You aren’t a good man. You’re not even a decent man. Look at you! You killed six fucking guys because you changed your mind about letting them sell beetle-chips to your neighbors!”

It leaned in drill-instructor close, my disgusted face right in my disgusted face, brim of its hat almost hitting me.

“You were letting them sell that shit right there, under your nose, and you call yourself a good guy? You protect some gangbangers instead of letting them kill each other off, you play favorites based on looks, killing trolls while helping elves, and you call yourself a good guy? You make deals with the fucking Gianellis, then break ’em, and you think your word is worth a damn? You let the Kenran-Kai keep the Sleeping Tiger running, let them fill it back up with girls, and you act like you solve problems? You kill six men ’cause an old lady gives you a plate of enchiladas, and you think you’re some kind of hero?”

It was almost kissing me, leaning in close like a lover, not a hater. Its voice got low and mean, honest. The voice of an ex right before she became an ex, when she’s not yelling and throwing things, but when she’s done crying, when you’re done fighting, when she’s just speaking simple truths that twist the knife.

“Puyallup ain’t no place for heroes, Jimmy Kincaid, but even if it was, you ain’t made of the right stuff. You’re a fraud. A chiphead junky, like any one of those bums in Tinman’s place. You ain’t no Chandler detective, Jimmy Kincaid. You ain’t no Marlowe, you ain’t no Spade. Hell, you ain’t even a Hammer. You walk down mean streets, sure, but you’re mean, too, and afraid. You’re tarnished. You’re as incomplete a man as they come, you’re a sham, you’re pett—”

“Just shut up, would’ja?”

The Dweller froze up for a second, cut off mid-rant.

“I do what I gotta do, all right? My house is a sinkin’ ship, and I’m just some asshole with a bucket full of holes. I’m not perfect. I know that better’n you, you fuckin’ parlor trick. I haven’t claimed to be perfect in a long time, pal.”

I took a step toward it, it took a step back. I kept going.

“I make deals because deals are my guns. My Colt’s for show, my Colt’s for when deals don’t work. My real ammo is compromises. My real weapons are favors. I make deals with Enzo, with his uncle, with fucking Tinman, because deals are how things get done in my world. Deals are how wars don’t start. Deals are how turf stays sane instead of getting soaked in blood. I make deals because deals are all that matter, and I killed Tinman and his boys because they broke a deal.”

Another pace, another breath before I kept ranting, the Dweller took another pair of big steps back.

“And yeah, I fucked over Enzo. Yeah, I compromised with the Yaks. Yeah, sometimes I look the other way. But it’s because the alternative is worse. It’s because I had to save a little girl, I had to try and keep things peaceful, I had to try and not kill folks for once.”

The Dweller stopped backing up. I crowded in, reached out and took my hat from atop its head, stuffed it where it belonged, just on principle.

“And I’ve got another job, and I need my ally spirit to get it done. So just shut up and get out of my way, pal. I’ve got shit to do.”

The Dweller laughed square in my face, done attacking, but done retreating.

“Nice work, Jimmy.” It clapped me on the shoulder like Enzo had, the same hollow gesture, the same faked respect.

“But you know I won’t just give you a high-five and a ride to the Citadel. You know you’ve got to work to get there. Where do you want me to send you next, buddy? Hmm? The Place of Battle, so we can see how you do in a fight without your precious little Ariana? The Place of Knowledge, so every plane of existence can see how stupid you are without a head full of computers to use as a crutch? Oh, I know, maybe the Place of Magic. Ha! Imagine that, Jimmy, you pathetic cripple. You want me to see if you can pass a magical test? See if you can do more than match wits with some half-stupid teenager from the Order of Merlyn?”

“Go fuck yourself.”

The Dweller smiled.

“The Place of Charisma it is!” It laughed out loud. “Good luck solving a situation through negotiation with that attitude, Jimmy.”

It blew smoke in my face, and I couldn’t help but blink against the sting; my astral eyes, my magical form, didn’t have cyberoptic covers.

I knew I’d be elsewhere when the smoke cleared.

CHAPTER 22

I had been here before. Not here-here, the Place of Charisma, no, but in the room it had created around me, in the situation it had wrapped me in, in the social briar patch it had wished up for me.

“Let the accused rise and come forward,” an old man in an old suit said, surrounded by other old men—and a single token woman—all in old suits. Here, in the Place of Charisma, I couldn’t quite see their faces. There, in that room all those years ago, I hadn’t quite been able to, either. They were all backlit, the glare carefully angled to make them all more imposing.

Like they’d needed the help. The tribunal was intimidating enough without cheap tricks with the lights. They held my career in their hands, and they knew it.

I stepped forward, chin up, chest out, shoulders back, meticulously shaved, shoes shined, creases sharp, decked out head to toe in my Lone Star dress uniform. It had been about fifteen years ago. Elves being elves, I didn’t look much older now, but these days I sure looked…less young.

“What do you have to say for yourself, son?”

A bit of Confederation of American States twang came out with the paternalism. I ignored it, and the fact he called me son. The room was hot. Sweltering. None of them seemed to notice it—CAS natives, one and all—but this Puyallup boy was sweating like an ork at a Humanis rally. A lazy fan ran lazy circles overhead, but there was only so much you could do in Georgia, wearing Lone Star dress blues, to stay comfortable.

 “Sir, I think this whole affair, these accusations, this investigation, has been a waste of corporate resources.”

I used to say ‘sir’ a lot more than I do now.

“Sergeant Rucker and I should be the ones leveling accusations, sir, not defending ourselves from them.”

Rucker—Yesica Rucker, who I called Jessica and the rest of the world called Hard Exit—had done pretty well for herself in the years since this case, by the way. Better’n old Jimmy Kincaid, that’s for sure.

There was muttering and grumbling from the high table, I saw a few silhouettes shake their heads.

“It’s not the business of the accused to question the proceedings in toto, Lieutenant Kincaid. It’s the business of the accused to tell their side of the story.”

Oh well. Might as well get this over with. The room was hot—hotter than anyplace home, in Puyallup or anywhere else in Seattle.

“Sir, what happened during this cross-training exercise was a shame. I understand that as an officer in the Department of Military Liaison, I’m here to incorporate and synergize with military forces. I’m grateful to the good men and women of Fort Benning for opening their installation to us, and for the opportunity for Lone Star to coordinate and train with the men and women of the CAS armed forces.”

It had been a clusterfuck of paperwork, I can tell you that. Newly-arrived Lieutenant Kincaid, recently transferred out of the Department of Paranormal Affairs (one set of paperwork) due to his hospitalization and loss of magical power (two more sets of forms) was then immediately sent out of the Seattle metroplex (one more) and into the Confederation of American States (immigration paperwork on top of the mission profile documentation), more specifically to a secure military installation (you guessed it) in order to perform cross-training exercises and advanced certification courses with CAS Marine Corps and CAS Army military police (with progress reports every day of training, as they worked to make us more military, and we worked to make them more police).

Oh, and all those reports? Those were just the routine parts, filed before the shit hit the fan.

“Let us ease up on the brown-nosing just a bit, young man, and focus on the events in question.”

I couldn’t even tell which fat old bastard had shut me up, they were all just shadows and jowls up there.

“Yes sir. Sorry, sir.”

I told you I’d said ‘sir’ a lot back then.

“Because Lieutenant Boyer had so recently backed out of the trip, and due to my own very recent transfer away from the D.P.I. and into Military Liaison—” all of which was the polite way of me saying ‘since you bastards set me up to fail,’ of course, “—I felt it was best to let Sergeant Rucker take point during most of training. She was the ranking NCO in both the CAS Marine and CAS Army units, and had experience both in the field and as a drill serge—”

“We are quite familiar with Ms. Rucker, thank you,” one of the shadowy Lone Star suits said, this one with an undeniable Texas twang. “And reports from others on-site have already made it clear to us the level of your…fraternization.”

“Sir, it was nothing like—”

“Just continue with the sordid tale of woe, Lieutenant Kincaid. On to the night in question?”

“Sir. We were deep in the training by then. Routine fitness competitions between Lone Star, Marine, and Army trainees, constant shooting competitions and tac-training that was scored, and this heat? Everyone was on edge. We were getting sharper, no doubt. But we were also tired. Frustrated. Wearing one another down with the competitions, amping each other up with some of what I first took for good-natured ribbing. Tempers were running hot, sir.”

“So, then, Lieutenant, you weren’t able to control your men?”

Right, because a bunch of Marines and Army soldiers were totally wired up to take orders from a cop, much less a cop that—somehow, through the grapevine!—they’d heard had recently lost most of his magical power and gotten his whole tactical unit killed.

“Yes, sir.”

Another murmur, a few jowls twisting in what I thought were satisfied smiles.

“But then, on the night in question, Lieutenant?”

“Those hot tempers reached a boil, sir, yes. Sergeant Rucker and I had been running hand-to-hand combat exercises that day, and—”

“Wrestling, Lieutenant?” 

Another dark chuckle. These pricks.

“No, sir,” I felt my young face flush, knew I was blushing from the jab, but tried to swallow it down despite the high collar of my uniform. I played it straight.

“Though some restraint techniques were a part of the training, of course, with the focus being on law enforcement, sir.”

Truth was, I was lousy at the stuff compared to her and her pair of black belts. I was more of a boxer, myself. Dad’d pushed me into Golden Gloves pretty early, and there was a time I was one of the best in my age bracket in all of Seattle. Jess’d been the one with the joint locks and Aikido and such.

“Do go on, Lieutenant,” I thought I heard a little disappointment that they hadn’t gotten a rise out of me. Good.

“The problem wasn’t during the day, sir, it was that night. Some of our officers—their names are in the reports I’ve filed, sir, which I’m sure you’ve all read—were upset at Sergeant Rucker. She’d acquitted herself very well that day, particularly during the scored part of the exercise. Lone Star was lagging behind a little, after Advanced Unarmed Techniques.”

We’d trounced everyone, actually, we co-instructors. She’d gotten tapouts from everyone she’d gone up against, I’d gotten knock-downs on more of the Marines and soldiers than not.

“So, your officers were losing the cross-training exercises, Lieutenant? You were leading them to last place?”

There was no winning with these pricks. Some of them leaned to whisper together, some to write things down again.

“Sir, the competition was very stiff, yes. We were there to train with them because they were good, that was the point.”

“Yes, of course. Continue, Lieutenant.”

“The problem came that night. The men were, all of them, tired. This experimental cross-training exercise had gone on longer than any prior to it, and everyone was exhausted. After the Advanced Unarmed challenges, they had bruises and bruised egos. Morale was low. Frustration was high. Some of the men tried to take it out on Sergeant Rucker.”

“Some of your men?”

“Some of both. Some of all three, I should say. Lone Star and CAS military, but there was just one Marine in there, two Army. Have you not all gotten access to my reports, I sent them out, I know, and—”

“Don’t worry about your reports, son. You’re having your chance to tell your story right now.”

“Sir, I understand that, but I…these were filed weeks ago. I was told they’d be read prior to the trial, I don’t see how—”

“Son. Just continue the story, hmm?”

“Sir. I…yes, sir. That night, those men attacked Sergeant Rucker. They’d shared around some balaclavas, mixed-up their PT outfits so all anyone saw was black and grey, no insignia, no logos, nothing distinctive. They had batons, and the six of them approached her while she was on her way back toward the bunks from the co-ed shower facility.”

Someone wrote something down. Someone harrumphed softly.

“And you just…happened to be there, Lieutenant?”

“Sir?”

“After her shower. You just happened to be with her?”

“No, sir. It was in my report, I was in my officer’s quarters. My ally spirit was outside, she’s the one tha—”

“The magical naked girl of yours?”

Someone chuckled, someone wrote. My fists clenched, so I moved to stand at ease where they couldn’t see them.

“Ariana has a female appearance, yes sir.”

“So your magical naked girl was showering with Ms. Rucker?”

“Sergeant Rucker took her showers alone, sir. This particular class of trainees didn’t have other women in it. My ally spirit was on general overwatch, and was drawn to the scene of the attack by the negative astral energies of their intentions.”

“I see.”

I bet he didn’t.

“And then these men approached Ms. Rucker, you say, and your magical naked girl came and got you, and is that when you assaulted them?”

“They didn’t approach Sergeant Rucker, they rushed her with stun batons, and I didn’t assault them, I ordered them to stop, and she’s not a ‘magical naked girl,’ she is a spirit that happens to take the—”

“You ‘ordered them’ to the tune of four concussions, seventeen fractures, three of them compound, lacerations requiring a grand total of one hundred and seventy-four stitches, one man passed out from a chokehold, and overall medical costs, lost field time, and liability costs of over a dozen times your annual wage, Lieutenant.”

“When I ordered them to stop—” My chin lifted just a little, my voice went lower, just a little defiant. “—they didn’t.”

Truth was, Jess’d had one out cold and another kicking at her ’cause his arm was broken before I even got there. Ariana’d done most of the heavy work, which was why the damage was so high. I’d tried to clobber the lot of ’em with a Stunball spell, a sort of hand-grenade of exhaustion and bruises. The spell just hadn’t worked, though. Nimbus and the damage she’d done had been too recent, my loss of power had been too raw. In the end, the girls’d done most of the ass-kicking. I’d just tackled the last one, the runner, and beaten him stupid with the hilt-end of his own stun-baton.

In my report, though, and Jessica’s report, and in the formal complaints filed by every stupid son of a bitch there, it had been all me. I did it to cover for Jess. Jess did it because I ordered her to. None of the other six would admit to getting their ass kicked by a woman and a ‘magical naked girl,’ so young Jimmy Kincaid got the credit for hospitalizing a half-dozen cops, soldiers, and Marines, all by his lonesome, without taking a scratch.

“This tribunal will now convene for final deliberations before returning with our findings,” one of the jowly old men banged a gavel. None of the old men in old suits stood up, and neither did the pinch-faced old woman up there, Lone Star’s reluctant nod to social progress. One of them—the one who’d been writing half the time?—just nodded, and then so did the rest of them, after barely even exchanging glances.

“The deliberations are finished,” the one with the deepest CAS drawl warbled out, maybe five seconds after deliberation began.

“The accused, one Lieutenant James Mitchell Kincaid, stands before an impartial tribunal in order to deal with the complaints levied against him by the men under his command, and the good men and women of the Marine Corps and Army of the Confederation of American States.”

What women?

“Let the record show that Lieutenant Kincaid’s personnel profile is to receive one official reprimand for a generally catastrophic failure to oversee a constructive and productive cross-training exercise, at tremendous corporate expense to Lone Star, and great taxpayer expense to the good people of the Confederation of American States.”

Oh. One reprimand? I could take that. My jacket was clean, my files were spotless, my record was pristine. Even the Nimbus clusterfuck hadn’t been pinned on me. Maybe they weren’t going to—

“And let the Lieutenant’s file also be updated as he receives one official reprimand for being the ranking officer that allowed discipline to so grievously and unfortunately grow lax to the extent that it did. For failing to maintain control of his men from within Lone Star, and the men entrusted to him by the people of the Confederation of American States, surely some punishment is appropriate.”

What?

“And let Lieutenant Kincaid’s record also show the addition of one official reprimand for inappropriate fraternization while on the job, being derelict in his duty while lasciviously making unwed relations with one Yesica Rucker, whose Lone Star citizenship record will also be updated and annotated accordingly in case the prodigal daughter should ever return to the corporate fold.”

“Sir, that didn’t—”

“And let Lieutenant Kincaid’s record also show the addition of one official reprimand for bringing great shame to Lone Star Security Services in failing to remain a part of the culture of corporate excellence we do deeply strive to maintain here, as the officers of his unit performed shamefully in comparison to their peers, no doubt due to the…carnal distractions…of their officer leading to poorly-run exercises.”

No. No, no, no. This couldn’t be happening.

“And finally, let the good Lieutenant’s record show an official reprimand for the cruel and wanton violence and abuse carried out against the helpless men of his command, and—once again—those fine fighting troops placed under his care by the good people of the Confederation of American States.”

Five. That was five. Five infractions meant termination, loss of citizenship perks, loss of all benefits, loss of…everything.

“It is with deep regret and tremendous shame we look upon you, Mister Kincaid, a bully, a tyrant, and a rake, so enamored of some floozy that you lost control of your temper and assaulted—beat near to death!—a half-dozen good men. It is only out of respect for your father’s years of meritorious service to this company, and out of the deep and abiding regret held by Lone Star Security Services, Incorporated, over your recent hospitalization, that we have refused to press charges in this instance. You will see no prison time for your brutality, Mr. Kincaid, but in exchange for that, we will no longer suffer seeing you behind our badge.”

Bailiffs moved on my flanks. A gavel rang. One of the jowly old bastards flashed a yellow-toothed smile at me.

“Someone remove that civilian from this courtroom, if you please, and, in fact, escort him from the building. Let Mr. Kincaid find his own flight home, as quickly as he can, as the Confederation of American States has grown weary of his continued presence here.”

Shadows moved around me, one of them taking my elbow unnecessarily, one of them just looming into my field of vision. A fat, old man waved in my direction with his gavel and the grip on my elbow tightened.

“And someone take that son of a bitch’s badge off him before he leaves.”

I heard fabric tear, felt a little tug at my chest, and saw those harsh lights gleam off my future at Lone Star—my whole life—as one of the faceless bailiffs tore my shield from me.

That was how the story ended, in the real world. I’d just gone. Just let them drag me out by the arm, let one of them tear my uniform, ripping my badge off, let one of them give me a contemptuous little shove at the door, like he’d been fighting the urge to give me a kick in the ass, too. Weak in the knees, weak in the heart, half in shock, I’d just let it happen.

But this wasn’t that place. This wasn’t that time. I was in the Place of Charisma, now. I wasn’t in a sweltering Georgia building, I was inside my own head, or way outside it, or somewhere in between. I’d followed the script until that moment—until that very moment—because I knew the rules to this game.

“I win,” I said, glaring up against the lights, ignoring the bailiffs in my way, trying to give every fat bastard up there a triumphant grin, all at once.

“Mr. Kincaid?”

“I won. Just now. This is me winning.” I went to wiggle my arm a little, and couldn’t. The bailiff tightened his grip, the other one shifted his posture, like he was worried I was about to escape. I lifted my free arm—the bailiffs tensed—and just used it to point to the vise-like grip one of them had on my elbow, then to the tear in my uniform.

“You enacted violence against me through no fault of my own. I came here for a social challenge. I was meek, and obedient, and unflinchingly polite. I didn’t even call any of you motherfuckers motherfuckers.”

I glared past their balding heads, stared right in the lights rigged up behind them, looked the Dweller on the Threshold right in his eyes. Everything else in the room froze, everyone else in the room went magically stiff, put on hold, paused.

“I talked my way through your test, and you initiated physical aggression against me anyway. Here, in the Place of Charisma.”

Just like they had in real life. It had been the salt on the wound, then, of course, the shit icing on the failure-cake. All those years ago, it had been the drumming out of Lone Star that hurt, and the little taste of violence at the end, the insult added to injury, hadn’t really mattered. But here, here and now, it was my words that counted, and theirs were the actions that weren’t supposed to happen.

The Dweller had sent me here to make me snap, give me the chance to flip over a table and strangle some fat bastard with his tie, to grab a bailiff’s gun and get back at Lone Star for kicking me to the curb, for smearing Jessica’s reputation, for talking about Ariana like she was some dirty toy. But I hadn’t. I’d followed the rules, for once, and they’d broken them, and that got me the game.

“So fuck off, Dweller. I win. Get me out of here.”

CHAPTER 23

There wasn’t a face-full of smoke this time, wasn’t anyone who did anything to me. I was in one place one second, and somewhere else entirely the next. The glare of the interrogation lights felt a little brighter, and as I squinted against it, suddenly, I was squinting against ash getting in my eyes instead.

Ash everywhere.

I was standing ankle-deep in the gritty stuff, it floated overhead and all around me, fell onto my shoulders and into my hair, coating everything in shades of grey. I knew—I felt—that I was in the right place, but the last time I’d been here, the only time I’d been here, the Metaplane of Earth hadn’t been like this. It had been a cave, all rock, all crystal, all veins of rich ores running through it. This time it was ash. Just ash, and the impression of mountains looming overhead, and somewhere far off, maybe a soft glow from lava flowing just out of my sight.

“Ariana?”

I turned, one hand up to shield my eyes, missing my cyberoptics.

“Ariana, are you here, kid?”

“Nope.”

I spun, slipping a little, wingtips slick on the stone and ashy grit. It wasn’t Ariana. It wasn’t the Dweller. I knew, deep down in my bones, who—what—I was talking to.

It looked like a mutt. A Barrens-born mongrel, flea-ridden, mangy, ribs showing against patchy hair, blind in one eye, notched ears from a lifetime of fighting.

It was my Mentor Spirit. My totem. My inner self, moral compass, magical guide. An avatar, manifested just to reach me during my metaplanar quest. Well.

“New look, huh? What a twist.”

“Yeah,” the mutt sat in the ash, tongue lolling, tail swooshing lazily. It had a Brooklyn accent, which made as much sense as it talking in the first place. “I gotta mix it up sometimes, you know? Appear differently to different supplicants—”

“Followers.”

“—supplicants, depending on what message I think they gotta hear. Right visual for the right time, all that jazz.”

“So, what do I need to hear?”

“Why’re you here, Jimmy?”

“I didn’t come here for a question, bub, I can tell you that.”

“I came here for a question, so answer it.” Those scarred ears went back a little, serious, dangerous. The playfulness left the dog’s voice, and it asked again.

“Why are you here?”

“You know why I’m here. I’m here for Ari.”

“Who’s Ari?”

“Don’t be li—”

“Who is Ari?”

It hopped up onto its paws, ridged up a little, tail went high, ears forward, bristling.

“She’s my ally spirit. Ariana. You know that.”

“Why’re you here for her?”

“Because she got disrupted. Combat mojo, de Vries—”

“The leech.”

“—de Vries took her out. She attacked him, he defended himself, she got clobbered. I know she’s here somewhere.”

“Where’s ‘here,’ Jimmy?”

I glanced around, saw the ash, the smoke, the looming ridges, the red-hot glow of lava.

“Metaplane of Earth?”

It came out a question when I didn’t want it to be.

“Look again,” the dog’s tail wagged a little, enjoying the game. “You see a lot of Earth here?”

“So what? The Dweller sent me to another Place? Another challenge?”

“Nah.” The dog shook, the way dogs do when they’ve got something in their ear, but I knew it was meant as a head shake. It plopped its butt down again, tongue lolling out.

“Dweller sent you where you were supposed to go. Where I wanted you to go.”

I looked around again, stomped the toe of my wingtip down deeper, dug in the ash. There wasn’t stone down there, just more ash, packed tight. The looming mountains I thought I’d seen, thought I’d felt, were the shadowy impressions of buildings. The dog wasn’t sitting on nothing—it was sitting on a curb.

I spun and took a better look. Not just a curb. A curb at a corner. Through the drifting ash and smoke I saw a street sign.

“We’re in Puyallup?”

“Winnah, winnah, chicken dinnah!” The dog’s tail wagged cheerily, one eye bright with mirth, the other clouded and dead.

“Why th’hell’d you take me to…to…what, the Metaplane of Puyallup?”

“I took you where I wanted to, to make you answer the question. You’re really hung up on this joint, Jimmy. Poo-y’all-up. Your head’s a fucking mess, pal, lemme tell ya. You dig this place an awful lot, self-identify with it, maybe to an unwholesome level. Seattle, too. The whole thing. I mean, I guess I can’t blame ya, though, look at how great shit goes when you leave town, am I right? Fuckin’ Georgia trip, that was a hoot, wasn’t it? You really aced that road trip, buddy, lemme tell ya.”

I sighed. Fuckin’ mutt.

“Why’m I…wherever this is?”

“Golly, Jimmy. I don’t know, I just asked you that.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, bub. I already said it. I’m here for Ariana.”

“Why?”

“Because she got disrupted!” Jeeze, I’m glad no one was here to see me arguing with a dog. 

“Why are you here for her?”

“Because I need to get her back. We’ve got a case.“

“What was that? Sorry, my hearing ain’t what it once was.” It flicked one ragged ear at me.

“Because I need to get her back, I’ve got a—”

“One more time, Jimbo.”

“Because I need t—”

“Couldn’t make that out. Come again?”

“I need…”

“What’samatter? Cat got your tongue?”

Fucking dog, being all smart.

“I get it, okay?” My voice sounded small.

“Pray enlighten me.”

“I’m not supposed to need her.” I swallowed, glared at the dog that was maybe just a hallucination, or was maybe meaner’n the devil.

“I’m not supposed to need anyone.”

“Almost right.”

“What?”

“You’re supposed to need me.”

Another lazy wag, looking pleased with itself.

“Fuck that,” I said, wishing it was louder.

“You need me, Jimster. You’ve needed me since that tramp tore you up, inside and out. You’ve needed me since you lost your mojo, the spring in your step, the twinkle in your eyes. I’m your little blue pill, pal. I made you mine when Lone Star taught you following orders was for suckers. I took you under my wing when you and that Bunny broad were out to fuck each other to death. I taught you how to get a little magic back, Jimbo, and you still need me to make all your little tricks keep working.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Yes, Jimmy. Yes. You. Do.”

I kicked ash in its stupid doggie face.

“The hell I do, mutt. You need me. You need followers to be real. The shit you Mentors hand out, they’re toasters to get us t’open a bank account.”

“You’re my dogs, and I keep you on leashes!” It bristled, grew, got waist-high on me. “You couldn’t even beat that pimply-faced nobody without me! I taught you to bind, boy. I taught you how to really nip someone else’s mojo in the bud. I’ve helped you every day since then, keeping you—”

“Fuck off, mutt. I don’t need you.”

“Then you don’t get me.” The dog loomed over me, bear-tall, breath hot and foul as it washed over me, snarling. “And you don’t get her.”

I felt it. A little tug on my soul. A little weight lifted, like someone had picked my pocket.

“You want to say I don’t own you? You want to say you don’t need me? Fine. I remove my gifts from you, and I remove your access to Ariana.”

“You can’t—”

“I can do anything I want. Poof. Done. Suck it, elf.”

“I made it past the Dweller, I made it to the Citadel, I want my ally spirit back!”

“No.”

“I followed the rules, mutt, and—”

“And I’m telling you, that ain’t enough to win this game.”

The dog started shrinking again, but its voice stayed loud, rolling like thunder amidst the smoke and ash.

“Rules don’t make you win, Jimmy-boy. Lone Star shoulda taught you that by now. Drawing inside the lines is for coloring books, not masterpieces. You don’t get to ignore the rules half your life, and then insist you followed ’em to the letter for the other half. Save that shit for Hermetics, pal. You made your call. You picked your team. You chose me, not just the other way around.”

The dog was normal-sized again, underfed, mangy. Sitting, again, scratching and making a face, eyes never leaving mine, voice never stopping.

“You wanna prove you don’t need me? We’ll make a game of it. I bet you can’t. You do this job, you finish this gig, and I’ll give her back to you. I’ll give you my blessings again. But you gotta prove it, Jimmy. You gotta ditch those crutches and walk on your own two feet.”

Ariana’s absence was an itch I couldn’t scratch. The off-balance feeling of my Mentor—my totem—pulling away was a mild vertigo. I was all pins and needles, all spinning head. I had to run my mouth, though. Had to try to flip it. I had to take a shot.

“No, more.”

“‘No more,’ Jimmy? Jesus, listen to you, you’re pathe—”

“No. More. I do this thing, you give me more. I don’t just get back like I was. You gotta sweeten the pot, muttley. We call it a Deed. An Ordeal. I kill the vampire that killed Minirth, I complete this job? Then I get your tricks back, I get Ari back, and you bump me up a notch. Initiation.”

The dog laughed right in my face.

“Double or nothin’, huh? The stones on you, Jimmy. Ha! Man. Dragonslayer’s missing out, brother, and cryin’ in his beer over it. Wolf could’ve almost had you, too, you crazy fucker. You got guts, Jimmy Kincaid. Fine. Fine, I’ll take that bet. If you get the leech that killed your pal, you get me, you get what’s-her-name, and you get an uptick.”

“Paw,” I said, holding out my hand like the dog was really just a dog, like I’d ordered it to sit, and was ordering it to shake.

It clawed at me with one forepaw, tail swishing, going along with it. We shook on it. A bet’s a bet.

My Mentor was a dick, but at least it had a sense of humor sometimes. The metaplane started shifting, started getting lighter and cooler. Less harshly dry, less mouth-of-the-volcano and more muggy summer day.

“Hey! What about Dog?” I said, as the ash started to clear, as the buildings became more distinct, as the lava-warmth started to recede.

“What?”

“Dragonslayer, Wolf, blah blah blah. Other Mentors you said almost got me, ’cause of my stones. I’ve read up on ’em. What about Dog? He’s all about loyalty, right? Why didn’t I go to him?”

The mutt raised a hind leg as the wind swirled, and started pissing a hair’s-breadth from my imaginary shoes. I was about to hear my Mentor Spirit’s final words before this plane vanished around me.

In the trids, in the stories, they’d be something profound. Something amazing. Something that would reaffirm my confidence as a spellcaster, and lead me on the right path in an upcoming magical battle.

“I don’t know, dumbass,” Adversary said through the stray dog’s grin, eyes catching the light just right and glowing a fierce red. “Why didn’t you?”

CHAPTER 24

I came to in my study, sitting in the half-lotus I’d settled into—I’m not big on kneeling—prior to my out-of-body experiences. My stomach grumbled. My head hurt. My throat was sore. It took my Transys a few seconds to boot up, and as I checked the time my stomach growled again, louder.

It had felt like an hour, maybe two. I’d been under for a day and a half.

My legs were wobbly and half-dead as I staggered to my feet and toward the apartment proper. Opening the library door let in a blast of Puyallup chill, and the whole interior was coated in a thin layer of ash that made me suppress a shudder.

“No.” I scowled, straightening up, walking barefoot across the light skin of grey. “Bastard ain’t takin’ that from me.”

The stuff was everywhere in Puyallup—including the inside of my place, after two days without a front window—and he wasn’t gonna ruin that. The shades of gray gave my city its charm. Some otherworldly bastard that might just be a group hallucination wasn’t going to make it something scary, something ugly. 

I trudged into the kitchen and went digging for grub. I came up with a couple slices of bread and another damned protein shake, but it’d do for now. I scarfed it down, leaned heavily on the counter from sheer exhaustion, and eyeballed my place. It was a mess. It wasn’t just the grit, the mess, the broken window, it was that Ari was gone, that my Mentor had turned its back on me. I felt off-kilter, hung over, tired. Things weren’t quite right.

Standing in my empty kitchen, I figured it was time to clean up. Normally I’d let Ariana handle it—she actually loved that sort of thing—but that wasn’t an option. Instead I braced myself against the counter, focused on the wind whistling through the window, and threw myself into a summoning rite, calling up about as large a spirit as I could safely handle, which wasn’t saying much.

The air elemental was in the classic Hermetic style, a vaguely anthropomorphic whirlwind, a little cyclone with a face cartoon-drawn on, the slender base of its tornado hovering just off my ash-coated carpet. I did my best not to show it how dizzy I was from the summoning, kept a hand on the countertop but tried to turn it into a casual lean.

“Heya pal.” I gave it a conversational nod as I headed toward my bathroom. “Swirl the place clean, do something to maybe keep some air on the other side of the broken windows, then call it a day, yeah? Don’t care how many services I called you up with, you do those two, then you split.”

It got to work, I got a shower. Everyone won.

Cleaned up, wearing my spare suit—no Ari to fashion-cast my usual into freshness, and I didn’t want to push my luck with the mojo—from the closet, I eyeballed the hole in the wall. A little spirit magic had guarded the opening from the bad luck of stray gusts breezing inside, and for now that would have to do. Flush from de Vries’ deposited nuyen, I figured that problem could take care of itself after a few phone calls, including a long-past-due heads up to the folks that ran the Thai joint downstairs; they could let one of the neighborhood handymen in and keep an eye on things, I figured, and I could pay both them and the repairman less than a proper company’d cost.

Me?

I hit the streets.

My Transys had a monstrous backlog of missed calls and spam messages, but I sorted them out while I sorted myself out; getting pavement back under my wingtips, walking the blocks, seeing folks out living their lives, hitting up street vendors, soaking up the life of the place. Nothing else would get my head on straight, not after the places I’d been and the memories I’d just faced, the deal I’d made.

I know the place ain’t never gonna be perfect, but it’s home. Talking to people, seeing the sights, tasting the food, being out there in it—in the life of the place—was how I got my feet back under me. 

What’s more, it was how I got started on cracking the case.

I knew what I was after—Nimbus dead—but it was going to take some work figuring out where she was and how to kill her. I strung along one of those detect vampire spells while I walked, but that was more out of paranoia and practice than really thinking I’d pinpoint anything. Without Ari around to hang onto spells for me, I was going to have to re-learn how to do my own heavy lifting and sustaining. Martin de Vries had left a hefty pile of nuyen to clean up the apartment and not worry about rent, so I could focus on the Infected-slaying for a little bit, but he hadn’t dropped enough scratch for me to hit up a talismonger and pick up a focus or anything like that. If I wanted a spell held onto, I was going to have to hold onto it myself.

Thinking about that first meet-up with Nimbus, all those years ago, left me thinking about another problem, though; ghouls. When I’d first tripped over her—or walked into her like a sucker punch, I guess—we hadn’t even been looking for her. We’d been on a sweep-and-geek, a kill-team mission to clean out a nest of other Infected. Those with the Krieger strain were a little different than vampires, banshees, and the other immortal-sorts of Infected. Ghouls lost all their hair. Their skeletons warped a bit, made them stronger, leaner, gave ’em a heck of a reach in a fight. Their skin went all weird, eyes turned milky white and dead, and they turned into half-astral critters, with one foot in the real world and one on the other side, making up for their lost real-world vision by being able to see life forms and auras—because that was how they hunted. Ghouls ate meat, but not just any meat. Metahumans; the fresher, the better. Clinical parabiologists and their fancy books said your average ghoul didn’t need much per day. Your average ghoul—gone crazy from the Krieger warping his brain, suddenly looking at their neighbors like walking, talking entrees—didn’t always agree.

Ghouls were half-predator, half-scavenger. Some tried to keep it under control. Some only ate waste corpses, just a little nibble every now and then, bodies stolen from the morgue or just left to lay in an alley or a gutter somewhere. Some kept their head, turned themselves into a sort of urban recycling platform, ate leftovers from street docs’ clinics, made a living eating up mob or shadowrunner evidence, made themselves useful to the criminal underground that society often pushed ’em into.

Some didn’t. Maybe most. 

Some fell in with a darker, bloodier crowd. Some worked for black-market organ farms, killing whoever they could, eating what they wanted, selling the rest. Some went crazy. Pants-on-the-head crazy. Some got less and less human, less and less metahuman, and started to just see the world as nothing but predators and prey. Some loved their new appearance, augmented it to get a rise out of folks, used it to shock and frighten people, got off on scaring their meat before killing and butchering it. Some stopped even being as human as that, stopped even trying. Some went underground, feral, living like rats in the dark.

Some fell in with vampires. Sometimes the Infected seemed to draw one another together, seemed to pull out the worst in each other. Sometimes a monster like Nimbus drew more monsters to her, recruited them, made them nastier than just the HMHVV could by itself. Once they got a taste for it, most of ’em didn’t stop doing that sort of thing, building up that sort of cult, that sort of pack.

Vampires live until you kill ’em; age is just a number. She’d had time to build herself a new harem, years and years to scrounge up more killers and butchers, to find a few ghouls willing to spread the disease to others, to find new ghouls to recruit for her.

To find Nimbus, I had to find the sort of animal pack she’d surround herself with. To find Nimbus, I had to find some ghouls. To find ghouls, I needed…

Fuck it, I didn’t know. I needed to stop and grab a bite to eat. The rain’d let up, so I hit a food truck, grabbing some noodles and chatting with the owner as I ate. Then I chatted with a leggy dame prepping to work the night shift on a nearby corner. Then a few of her friends. Then—very politely—their pimp, who made it clear he didn’t much appreciate me distracting his girls and keeping their attention from paying clients. Then the girls again, screeching at me about hurting ‘their man,’ and one of ’em pulling a knife as I stepped away from his unconscious form in the gutter, rubbing my knuckles.

Ah, home sweet home.

I tried again, maybe a half-dozen other places. I went to the speakeasies I knew, the soy-shops, even hit up the Crime Mall food court for a bit. I grabbed grub here and there, but mostly kept an eye out for folks I knew. Rubbing elbows with the down-and-out kept me sharp, and I got a dozen sob stories in three languages, filing their complaints away for another day, making mental—and headware—notes about anyone they said was missing, promised them I’d do what I could, when I could.

I wasn’t taking on new cases, not officially, but it never hurt to keep my cyberears close to the ground, listening to what the neighborhood had to say. If I could run an errand for someone, a straightforward gig to deliver a message or lend a helping hand, I did it. I had nowhere to be, no particular plan anyway, so putting some kilometers on my feet was as good an idea as any. I collected favors that way, rumors, neighborhood capital. The world expected you to turn your back on your neighbor, so I helped out. The world told me Puyallup was a hellhole, so I tried to make it ease off a little. The world said it was a dog-eat-dog sort of joint, so I surprised people by being decent when I could.

All that good karma wasn’t paying off in a hurry, though. I was stuffed to the gills with cheap streetmeat and cheaper soy, but no closer to finding a nest of ghouls or their vampire queen, despite being down fifty nuyen in food bills, thirty in booze, and twenty in tips. It felt good, I felt good, but I wasn’t making the progress I needed.

Time for a new direction. The streets weren’t cutting it for me. They’d helped me get centered again, get focused, recover from the jaunt into my own head…but they weren’t helping the case.

I headed back toward the apartment. A glance at the third floor showed me my windows boarded over—well, it beat nothin’—but I wasn’t heading upstairs. I climbed into my Ford and hit the road, heading west toward Fort Lewis.

CHAPTER 25

If it wasn’t on the far end of Puyallup from the district hall and courthouse, I swear I’d just about live at the Spirit Focus. It was the best jazz joint in town—in the whole Seattle Sprawl, hell, in the world, if you asked me—and I was a regular, even though it was about as far from my home as you could get while still staying in town. Smoke and music filled the air in equal measure, and it was never just a half-assed simshow. No, you got live performances in the SF, and nothing but the best; old hands with a lifetime of gigs behind ’em, up and comers with a knack for improvisation, and everything in between. The commute was the only thing I didn’t love about the place.

Well, almost the only thing.

The Spirit Focus was protected. Not by me, not just by the rich downtowners who came to visit and brought their own exec-protect details, and not by Knight Errant or Lone Star, no. It was the Yakuza that had the contract, the Yakuza that kept the SF and the nearby blocks clean and orderly. I knew where some of their money went, I knew where some of their money came from. I knew having the xenophobic Yakuza playing cop in a district that was over half metahuman was dangerous and arrogant. But damnit, I knew I couldn’t change that.

I was here for work, but hell if I wasn’t going to soak in the place a little anyway. I bellied up to the bar—Big and Little Frankie, a dwarf and a fomori, were there, as always—and waved and nodded at Frankie the fomori.

“Hoi, Jimmy. The usual? Neat?”

“Nah. Feelin’ sour tonight. Make it a Manhattan, no, a Rob Roy, perfect. Lowball, on the rocks.” I stuck up two fingers, and, along with my habits, he went ahead and knew to make it a double. “Shaken, yeah?”

“You got it, boss.” The amiable giant got to work, his big hands deft despite their size, and I scanned the place through the smoke in the air, using the mirror behind the bar. 

Just like at Pornutopia, I knew who I was looking for. This time, though, I didn’t see ’em. 

Frankie brought me my drink, and I took a swig.

“Hey, Frankie, the Oyabun ’round tonight?” I tried to ask casually, but it was tough to be casual when asking for a local syndicate boss.

One big eyebrow quirked, and Little Frankie stiffened up. Down the bar, Big Frankie, the dwarf, pretended not to hear. The two were vets, served together in the Desert Wars. They liked me, but I wanted to keep it that way.

“You ain’t lookin’ for trouble, are you Jimmy?”

I threw back the rest of the drink, shook my head.

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Little.”

“Haven’t seen him. He doesn’t come in all the time, lately. Busy with whatever it is those guys are busy with, you dig?”

“I hear ya.”

The drink did the job, slowing things down for me, taking the edge off. Jazz made my Sideways gene treatment anxious. Maybe that’s why I liked it here. My chemical cocktail made my brain constantly try to find predictability, patterns, repetition; jazz, the very best of it, live, thumbed its nose at all that.

“Listen, if he comes by, you tell him Kincaid wants to talk, yeah? Nothing bad. Nothing bloody. You got my word on that. I just wanna ask him a question.”

Frankie’s big brow furrowed, he leaned in close almost like it was possible for someone of his sonorous metaspecies to really whisper.

“You don’t ask guys like him questions, Jimmy. You ask ’em favors.”

I sighed.

“I know, Little Frankie. I know.”

I was going to ask after Ms. Brevik, the owner—speaking of favors, she owed me a few—when something about Big Frankie and his neatly-trimmed beard reminded me of who I should be talking to.

Pinkerton.

I was off my stool, tugging my hat on in no time. I fished in my pockets and came up with a couple crumpled bills, slapped the scrip down and slid it Frankie’s way.

“I’ll see ya ’round, big guy.”

I had a new plan. A better one than just asking the Yakuza for help and hoping it’d end up okay.

I prodded at my Ford’s GridGuide and stabbed in Pine Street and Western, up in Seattle proper. The autonav took the Americar out while I scrolled through my Transys for his number. It was early enough the place was surely still open, and if he wasn’t there, I didn’t know where else to find him, but I’d call on the way to make sure.

“Pinkerton? It’s Kincaid. Listen, I’m headed your way. Got a minute to compare notes on a case?”

CHAPTER 26

The Pink Door was a little nothing-fancy bar. Not a proper Puyallup district dive, but a Downtown place. Rustic by their standards, ritzy by mine, it had two things going for it in my book. One was the co-owned bakery next door, which filled it with smells good enough to take my Sideways’ mind off visual cues, hearty meat pies that made a great lunch on the go, and chocolate éclairs I just might kill someone for.

The other good thing about the joint was Dexter Pinkerton, private eye. Pink had the best damn street name in Seattle. He had nothing to do with the Pink Door officially, mind you, but as a shorthand for his actual name, the nick just stuck. He always wore something pink, just to top it off—nice pink shirt to contrast with his dark skin, maybe just a tie, maybe a whole suit—and keep up the brand recognition. He didn’t go way back with the owner, didn’t own half the joint, didn’t get paid to work the door, hadn’t ever even done a case for ’em that I knew of. He just liked gyoza more than most folks, and after going solo, had recognized that a little advertising went a long way. He’d been Lone Star for a long time, a Puyallup kid done good, working his way up the ranks. When they lost the Seattle contract to Knight Errant, he’d decided to go the self-employed route. The Pink Door was where he did business, sucking down booze and dumplings between cases.

He hopped off his stool when I came in, and gave me a handshake that threatened to break something. Pinkerton was a dwarf, and not a scrawny one. He was a hair under 1.4 meters, a pinch under a hundred kilograms, and all of it was muscle, guts, and good humor. Back in the day, he’d gotten a little static back at Lone Star for his metatype and being black, but he and I had hit it off, and gotten along ever since.

“Rusty Nail and a chocolate éclair, still?”

It’d been years, so hell if I was gonna turn it down.

“Yeah. And whatever’s on your tab for the day, if you can help me out.”

Pink raised an eyebrow—a hungry dwarf could work up quite a tab, hanging in a joint like this all day long—but nodded. Once the bottle jockey’d come and gone, I started in.

“You remember two years back?” I knew the answer.

“Wish I didn’t,” he grimaced, pushing his half-full plate away.

“Are the Disassemblers still around?” I knew the answer again.

“Wish they weren’t, but yeah. We didn’t hit ’em hard enough.”

They were a gang, maybe one of Seattle’s nastiest, that mostly ran around Pinkerton’s neck of the woods. I’d stumbled across ’em because two of Enzo’s boys—the ones the Gianellis were mad at me for killing—were part of a kidnapping ring, sidelining, sending stray folks from Puyallup up into the Disassembler pipeline. The Disassemblers used ’em for parts. They were organleggers, and none too picky about it. They also had a skull motif. Every asshole in the city seemed to, when they wanted to look tough, but their look and Nimbus’ look—her white-painted skull, right over her face—lined up better than most.

Pink and I’d worked together on the Disassemblers those couple of years ago, our cases tangled together as we were both tackling a missing person gig, and instead of stomping on each other’s toes, we’d combined our firepower. At the end of the night’s work there’d been almost a dozen less Disassemblers worrying the neighborhood, we’d freed his client, and Knight Errant had assured their clients—the district management of downtown—that they’d redouble their efforts against the body-snatchers.

“I’m looking for ghouls,” I told him, not in the mood to beat around the bush. “Looking for a vampire, really, but last time I followed a trail of bread crumbs and Krieger-strain, and found her by accident. This time, I’m after her on purpose. She’s got the same look they do, and she works for Tamanous.”

“And the Disassemblers work with Tamanous.”

I nodded. “And the Disassemblers work with Tamanous.”

“And the Disassemblers are in my neighborhood.”

“And the Disassemblers are in your neighborhood.” I nodded again. “You know this part of town. I don’t.”

He gave me a long look, thinking about two years ago and what we’d found, what we’d put a stop to, where this line of questioning might take us again. I didn’t blame him. When my nightmares weren’t running the usual syndicated reruns, I saw the Disassemblers’ base, too. The cleavers. The chopping blocks. The pens. The teeth marks on the bones.

“You’re a tough guy to like, Jimmy,” Pink sucked on his teeth, ran his fingers through his short beard. “But I owe you one.”

“You owe me two,” I said, pushing my luck, but telling the truth. One for how the fight had gone down and how Ari’d patched him up at the end of it, one for how I’d refused to take a cut of his pay because it’d been his case, not mine, we’d seen to a happy ending.

He raised an eyebrow again. “You calling in both?”

“I kinda have to right now, Pink. I’m in deep.”

“Fine. I’ll help you find who I can help you find, and I’ll help however I can after that. You got my word on it.”

We ordered coffees, to go. I wolfed down a second pastry on the way out, figured riding the sugar high wouldn’t hurt anything. Ari wasn’t here to pester me about eating healthy. If I could find an up-side to her being gone, it was that.

CHAPTER 27

“You fuckin’ kiddin’ me, Pink?”

I glared through the windshield at a basement bar’s blinking neon sign, THE CHOPPING BLOCK in big, bold letters, and a red arrow pointing down.

“Hey, you wanted the Disassemblers, this is where I know some of ’em hang out.”

“Really? Even with this sounding like such a nice place, you’re worried the criminal element may’ve moved in?”

“I detect a fair bit of sarcasm, Jimmy,” he cracked back as we climbed out of my Ford. Both of us checked our hips for our pieces, and I checked my opposite for my wand. Old habits die hard.

“Oh, no. Me? Wouldn’t dream of it. I’m sure this fine establishment’s just where a bunch of lumberjack enthusiasts spend their off hours. It’ll be great, Pink. No way we’ll run into trouble here.”

We descended half a staircase, away from the harsh glare of the neon light and its AR overlay, and into the darkness. No one worked the door, probably because that would imply they were selective about who got inside. It was a dump. Neither of us might scream ‘cop’ any more, but we weren’t this dive’s usual clientele, either. We were south of Sea-Tac, not exactly in the heart of upper class Downtown any more. It felt—it was—closer to home to me, but not in any of the good ways.

There were a few beat-up pool tables nursing stains best left vague, with a half-dozen folks in leather and bad attitudes playing. They had ink aplenty, and my headware got to work scanning through Knight Errant and Lone Star catalogs of known gang insignia.  The opposite wall had a dingy bar with a dingier old woman behind it, along with a joyboy and a woman of negotiable virtue lounging at opposite ends, glaring at each other for stolen customers in a way that left me wondering how old the feud was. A rickety old Sony entertainment console, scarred and flickering, was the only other occupant.

We picked a spot in the center of the bar—didn’t want either prostitute to think we were playing favorites—and the sour-faced old woman put down her dirty rag to come glare at us for interrupting her nothing-at-all.

“Couple of beers,” I said, holding up two fingers.

“Couple of queers, you mean,” said one of the jacket-wrapped crew somewhere behind us. I looked for reflections, but the mirror behind the bar was, for once, altogether too filthy to make out much but rough shapes.

Pink and I exchanged glances in our peripheral vision.

The old lady’s face got a little more sour as she gave us our drinks—bottles I’d seen her open, thank Odin, hell if I was gonna push my luck by drinking out of a glass in a joint like this—like she was expecting to have to clean up after us, teeth and bloodstains and who-knows-what.

In fairness, she was kind of right—just not in the way she thought.

I lifted my beer, eyes still on the blurry reflections, and Pink clinked it with his. Both of us sat quietly, minding our own business, nursing our lukewarm SoyBuds. My TacWhisper didn’t pick up the sounds of anyone playing pool any more.

“So this elf and this dwarf walk into a bar,” a rough voice said from over by the tables, I saw a vague shape forming from the dirty mirror, someone wearing black and carrying a pool cue. He wasn’t alone. None of ’em had put their sticks down.

“I don’t remember how the middle of that joke goes.” I didn’t turn around, didn’t raise my voice, “But I’m pretty sure the punchline is ‘fuck off and leave us alone.’”

Two of the greasy silhouettes turned to exchange looks with one another, incredulous. A sidelong glance showed me that the hookers were gone, and the old lady didn’t even try to hide it as she just limped off to the stockroom and shut the door.

Good.

“You in the wrong place, keeb. You too, halfer. Dandelion District’s North a’here.”

“I’m not lookin’ for the Elven District, thanks.” I cast ’em a sidelong glance, Sideways and cyberoptics doing their job, counting heads, tracking weapons, scanning for identifying physical characteristics, like distinctive, skull-shaped tattoos.

“Don’t care what you lookin’ for, keeb. Just sayin’. You found something else, instead.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“You sure you wanna do this?” I took another pull off my beer. Pink sighed.

The big guy answered by coming in with a big overhand swing of his club, a standard number one strike, right to left, high to low. I swayed to one side and slipped off my stool, letting it sail past me and crack the heavy end of his pool cue onto the bartop, adding a mark and shattering the stick.

He held the broken pool cue up in front of him like an idiot, looking at it like he’d never hit a thing with another thing before. My beer bottle—alas, poor SoyBud, I knew him, Pinkerton!—smashed across his head a split-second later, just right, high up, clipping the temple just so. The bottle broke, blood flew, and he dropped like he’d been poleaxed.

“You maybe should’ve brought more guys,” I said to the five that were left.

Two rushed Pink, three came at me. He planted his short legs against the bar and launched himself backwards, stronger and heavier than he looks. Somehow dwarfs always blindside the rest of us with how powerful they are. Pinkerton barreled into them and soon all three were down on the ground, twisting, biting, grappling, wrestling. In close like that, they’d have no real reach advantage. In close, his broad shoulders and strong grip’d make short work of ’em.

Which left me mine, natch.

One threw his stick to distract me, then came in with a punch instead. I let the bent cue clatter off my left arm, then slipped his right straight and stuck my broken beer bottle in his face. He howled and stumbled backwards, clutching his face, and I let him go ’cause his two buddies were coming in hot. I blocked again, clinched for a second, and snuck in a head butt because refs were for the ring, not the barroom. His buddy bowled right into me, heavier than my current dancing partner, and drove me back into the bar itself. My Corpsman let me know there was some structural damage, but I ignored it to get in a good left-right that blasted the big guy back, buying me a little space and all the time in the world to call in my heavy hitter.

“Ari,” I said, smirking.

The answer I got was a big right cross that took me off my feet, turned me around, slammed me headfirst into the bar. I started bleeding, my Corpsman started flooding me with pop-ups, and I saw black working in at the edges of my sight. It didn’t—couldn’t—hurt, but I wasn’t really happy, either.

One ganger’s boot smashed into the back of my knee as I tried to get up, a second one started kicking me in the ribs pretty good. I held onto a leg for dear life, then started twisting. He went down in a tangled mess, but when I went to get up I caught the heavy end of a pool stick across the back of my shoulders.

I crawled over on top of the one I’d wrenched to the ground, just kept grabbing and twisting whatever I could find, while he did the same and tried to bite me through my thankfully-lined coat. His buddy started jabbing at my ribs with the broken end of his cue, and while it didn’t exactly hurt, it wasn’t a sign of affection, either.

My left hand snaked down for my wand as I twisted and wiggled for space, and I felt it warm up my hip as I channeled power through it. I reached out with my right and tapped the poking one on his lead leg, my hand swathed in pure mana, the lightest glancing touch turned into a magical assault. The casting took a little something out of me, but he fell backward, his knee broken, so I called it a win.

With my attention no longer split, and with me still soundly on top, I slammed my grappling partner’s head against the concrete a few times—nothing fancy, no jiu-jitsu or anything, just me with a hand on either side of his head—giving him a bonk, bonk, bonk, until he stopped moving.

Whew.

Clambering to my feet, I saw Pink bashing ol’ Glassface over the head with a barstool, his initial two opponents down in a heap. I laughed and shook my head, swiping away my Corpsman biomonitor’s medical warnings, and dusted myself off.

“Only three each, huh? And to think, you were worried this joint’d be trouble!”

Then I noticed the switchblade sticking out of my side, staining my shirt and pants a deep, slick red.

“Oh, fuck.” Pink’s eyes went wide.

“Amen,” I reached down and plucked it out of me, wincing as the blade scraped bone. It didn’t hurt—clearly—but it felt weird as hell. Like nails on a chalkboard, but inside of you. My Sideways did both of its jobs, clearly showing me exactly how deep the blade had penetrated by scanning it as I threw it away, but also flooding me with a fresh wave of endorphins to keep me from caring too much.

I barked out a laugh.

“Well, so much for calling this one my good suit, huh, Pink?”

“Uh, Jimmy, shouldn’t you maybe oughtta sit down?”

I shrugged, clambering up onto a fresh barstool and reaching for his beer, miraculously untouched in the fracas.

“May I?”

He nodded, I drank. He waited.

“Jimmy, maybe you should call Ariana, y’know? You’re leakin’ pretty good, pal.”

“Hah! Fuck me, yeah. Guess I should’ve…done…one sec.”

I finished the beer, then reached down and tried to focus. It was hard. I hadn’t healed myself in a long time. Hadn’t healed anyone. I’d always had Ari for that. Half of Puyallup’d had Ari for that. Still, if Martin de Vries could do it, I unrealistically insisted to myself, I could do it.

“Presto change-o, coming right up,” I tried to sound reassuring, but was pretty sure I was screwing that up, Pink just kept watching me bleed out.

“Cnila,” I muttered, Enochian for blood.

“Bliors,” I whispered, Enochian for comfort.

“Fuck.” I cringed, feeling the wound and how quickly my hand went red-wet and warm.

It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t easy, and it left me almost falling off the stool, but I managed enough of a spell to stop the bleeding.

“So.” Pink gave me a crabby look, eyes down, watching the half-dozen assholes and not wanting to make eye contact with me. “No Ariana, huh?”

“Excellent work, detective.”

“And you just didn’t feel like maybe mentioning that to me, before we walked in here?”

“No, I did not.” I slid off the stool, twisted a little to test the wound. I felt a bit of a pull, but nothing reopened. My Biomonitor reminded me I should probably get a tetanus shot.

“You don’t think being down our howitzer is worth mentioning?”

“Would you’ve come with if I’d said so?”

“Yeah,” he said, looking up, looking pissed, looking hurt that I’d even asked. “I just would’ve liked to know, Jimmy.”

Oh.

I looked away first, ’cause I was a shitheel.

“Hey, assholes.” I kicked one of them over, wingtip to his shoulder, flipping him. “Who’s awake?”

None of ’em were patched up, and that wasn’t good. That said, it wasn’t unusual for a gang to lay low, comparatively speaking, when Knight Errant put the heat on. You didn’t have to wear your patched-up leathers, but tattoos were forever.

“Eeny, meeny, miny, yo!”

I found the one I’d tagged with the skull-tats earlier, a charmer with half his face done up like his skin was missing, red and white ink on tan skin, a bio-tat that probably glowed in the dark because isn’t that charming. He had a broken leg and blood on his hand, probably from stabbing me with what I’d thought was a broken stick, but hadn’t been. I didn’t really like him.

“You. Yeah, you. Your tat’s not finished, and you’re not packing. That means you’re a probationary member at best. But you do have a prominent skull tattoo, in a joint like this, and no one’s eaten your face off to express dominance. So! That means you’re in, even if you’re at the bottom. Tell me how the Disassemblers work. Tell me where I can find them.”

“Fuck off, keeb!”

I threw the empty beer bottle at his twisted leg.

“I’m in no mood for your shit, pal,” I let a little of my Mentor’s threats slip into my voice, into my sneer, into my blood-slick bad attitude. Pink looked away, busily eyeballing the other punks, making sure no one had a nasty surprise for us.

“You tell me what I want to know, or I’ll snatch the life right out of you, buddy. One limb at a time, one spell at a time, I’ll do you slow because bigger spells just piss me off, these last dozen years or so. It’ll take a while, but you’ll be dead and stupid instead of alive and stupid.” I stood over him, glaring down, letting the few lights play tricks for me, knowing that nothing works quite like a basic physical domination accompanied by unrelenting psychological warfare. My PeopleWatcher subroutines ran, telling me how scared he was, just in case I was an idiot and couldn’t tell myself.

“And then I’ll burn this filthy place down with you and this pack of idiots still in it, and I’ll just hang out for a while. One way or the other, I’m finding your gang. You’ve just got to decide if you’re going to tell me, or if I’m going to just jump ’em while they’re having you like fuckin’ barbecue after this place burns to the ground.”

His fear—his real fear, bone-deep terror—at that prospect confirmed an awful lot of dark, bloody rumors about the Disassemblers. It also added the acrid scent of urine to the room’s already sorely lacking ambience.

But hell if he didn’t tell us some good stuff.

CHAPTER 28

Pinkerton headed his own way afterward. He told me to call when I needed him, but he’d done enough—honestly, he’d done more than enough, if y’ask me—for one day.

I’d gotten my lead. Now I just had to hunt it down.

I scraped together enough power for a quick fashion spell, cleaning off the worst of the stains and knitting the hole shut in my suit. It came easier than when I’d healed myself, but not much. I sat in the front of my Ford for a few minutes after that casting, just trying to get an even keel again.  Then I went to get some more grub; I was in for a long night.

I was staking out a drop-box. There were dumpsters all over the city—duh—but some of them served a secondary purpose. Some of them were, in a word, meat lockers. If you didn’t care about freshness or quality, if you weren’t planning to use a corpse for parts whole enough to be sold, if all you were was a bottom-feeder in an organlegging outfit, the guy with the shit job to just dispose of corpses? If all of that was true, you worked the drop-box circuit. You stayed on the bottom rungs of the ladder, you cleaned up after everyone else, and you maintained your organization’s business contacts by providing yet another unsavory service to the criminal underbelly of Seattle.

If you whacked someone, you could dump the corpse in certain places. Roll up, pop the trunk, toss the body, take off, and it was all taken care of. The Disassemblers and Tamanous would use the parts, if the kill was fresh enough and the organs they were after were in one piece. If not, their ghouls—the scavengers of the scavengers, living garbage disposals—got it. Either way, a valuable criminal service was being offered, the Infected got their meat for a while, and your despicable organization branched out from recycling to waste disposal management.

This wasn’t my favorite stakeout, no.

I’d hit up a Stuffer Shack—they were so well stocked up here, outside of Puyallup—for food, WhiteBrite gum, and coffee, and I was just left waiting. I didn’t have anyone to talk to. I didn’t have Ariana glowing in the back seat, nattering away at me about cartoons or spell formulae. I didn’t have a line open to Skip and Trace, they weren’t watching from down the street or around the back-end of the alley, ready to help out. Hell, I didn’t even have a head full of messages from Reynolds, demanding status updates and micro-managing like this was a research project; he was leaving me alone, despite days of radio silence, just letting me work, staying out of my way for once. I didn’t have anything except the tug on my spirit that told me Ari was gone, the emptiness where my Mentor’s gifts had been, and the nagging guilt over a dead friend I hadn’t been around to save.

I squinted, cyberoptics zooming and focusing through the darkness. Movement. The Toyota Elite backed up—slick wheels, high comfort, and a price-point to match, it was a classic luxury sedan—and the trunk popped open. Two guys in suits got out, my TacWhisper cyberaudio went to work. Ah, balls. Korean. They were chatting, probably bitching about working so late, but in a language I didn’t know and didn’t have a slotted linguasoft ready for.

Yeah, I was recording. Why not? I wasn’t after the dumpers tonight, but you never know when footage of some Seoulpa killers dropping off a corpse might come in handy.

They barely glanced around, overlooked my grubby Americar with the windows tinted all the way up. Their cargo was bundled up in black garbage bags, and I felt my stomach turn a little. Three bags. Pieces, not a whole body. There was no mistaking the way they hauled it, though, the way they tried to reach and turn and lean to keep anything from hitting their designer suits, the way one of the bags was leaking—zoom, enhance, confirm that it’s blood—and left one killer laughing at the other for the mess he’d made.

I wanted to grab my Colt. I wanted to just floor it, run ’em down with my Ford. I wanted to let loose Ariana, have her throw lightning from on high like an angry storm goddess.

I gripped the wheel, instead, lucky gloves creaking against the leather, going white-knuckled as I made myself sit and stew instead of go stop ’em.

I had a job. The job came first. I couldn’t blow this by running off half-cocked and borrowing trouble. I had enough enemies in sharp suits and fancy cars. I didn’t need, couldn’t afford more. Not when it meant jeopardizing Minirth’s investigation, too.

They made some sort of call, one commlink out before they were even back in their car, lighting up the alley as they drove away.

I just had to wait, now. Just had to fill my mouth with WhiteBrite gum and coffee to stay sharp and awake, had to fight the urge to go across the street, knife open some bags, try to identify someone’s missing son or daughter, someone’s husband or wife, someone’s sister or brother. I had to wait, had to see how they handled pickup after getting a call about a delivery. I needed to tag their vehicle, shadow ’em if I thought I could, had to be ready to roll.

Their pickup came in a pick-up. It was an old Nissan Rebel, covered in rust as much as paint, with an ugly ork standing up in the back, holding onto the roll-bar. Their headlights blasted right at my Americar as they navigated the turn, backed up so the truck-bed was just next to the dumpster.

I held still and trusted in the tinting and their boredom; this was just a job to them, just like everything everyone ever did was just a job to them, no matter how stupid or evil or risky. They were trash men, doing a crappy job, and this was just another sack of garbage they had to haul from point A to point B. They weren’t alert. They weren’t looking for me, any more than the grousing Seoulpa Ring killers had been.

The ork didn’t even climb out, just smack-smacked the cab when they were close enough, then leaned and reached. One, two, three, he flung the bags in the back of their truck. He didn’t fidget to try and keep them from leaking on him. He didn’t seem to care.

Then they rolled out. I scrolled through my headware as I thumbed my Ford to life, looking to see if they bothered with a license plate. No luck—I had to check, though—so I rolled out after them, lights off, staying a half-block back. The big ork sat on the side of the bed now, greasy hair blowing in the breeze, wearing leathers and denim, not a care in the world.

I kept my distance. I knew how. I’d played this game before. If there’s one thing every private eye needs to be able to do, it’s take a joint out. If there’s a second, it’s tail someone.

They hit two other drop-boxes—I flagged ’em in my headware, safe and sound while staying a corner away, a block or so behind, a dark shadow in my grey-and-black Americar, lights off, windows black. I coasted to stops and used the parking brake instead of the pedal, not even wanting the lights to possibly give me away.

“C’mon.” I tapped anxious fingers on the top of the wheel, “C’mon, c’mon. Make a delivery, you pricks. Show me the next step up your ladder.”

The Rebel rolled up to one last drop-box. The ork stepped into the dumpster again, one foot in the truck, one in the trash, and rummaged until he found the right bag. Then, once again, flung it carelessly into the back of their Nissan and slung his leg back over, stepping in corpses, high leather boot soaking in murder. All in a night’s work.

They started rolling again, and the ork leaned forward after another thump-thump on the cab at the next stop sign.

“That’s it, assholes. Be tired. Be done. Head for home.”

The ork leaned away from the window again, as I rolled up to the stop sign they’d pulled away from. I glanced at my nav-system to double check our location, then glanced up again, following them. We were solidly on the outskirts of town now, moving into the half-empty industrial districts, the parts of the city that looked like home to me. The dark parts. The dangerous ones. When I looked back up, the ork stood in the back of the truck bed, blocky AK-97 assault rifle pointed at me.

Shit.

He started firing just as the driver started racing away. The Kalashnikov chattered away on full auto, spitting lead and lighting up the empty street with muzzle flashes. Sparks flew as his rounds chewed at my armor plating, and I floored it, hit the lights, triggered my high beams. The glare bought me a second as he held up one hand against the lights, and I made the most of it. My Ford’s oversized engine snarled as their rust-heap burned rubber, and the chase was on.

I had to send out GridGuide override after GridGuide override, but it did the trick. Their old truck probably wasn’t even tied to the city traffic-nav system, as they didn’t seem to have any trouble pouring on the gas in violation of local traffic laws. I had more engine and less mass than they did, but they had a psycho with a very big gun distracting me. Gaining ground was slow going, and before long my windshield started to spiderweb.

“Bulletproof” things really aren’t, if you’re dedicated enough.

I threw caution to the wind and floored it—really floored it—to try and catch the ork while he was reloading, before he did any more damage. His stark white facial tattoo caught the light, a skull inked to the outside of his face, and his eyes showed whites all around them right before the impact.

My push-bar rammed into the back of their Rebel, and the driver had to change his game plan. The ork nearly went flying, dropped his gun, suddenly more worried about staying in the truck than killing me; good.

The impact lent the truck more speed, but that was momentary. It just meant I had space to floor it again and ram ’em proper. The second collision sent the ork down, scrabbling to lower his center of balance, getting jostled around and nearly flung from the back of the speeding truck. My Ford bucked as it rode over their bumper, which broke away and rolled under my tires as my push-bar strove for more damaging hits.

The Rebel’s tires slid back and forth, rear-end uplifting, losing traction. Just as he got it back together, just as the ork knelt to lift the AK again, I hit them with a pit. Bumping into the Rebel just behind the rear wheels, side-to-side, not just front-to-back, I sent ’em spinning.

The Nissan Rebel, my Transys reported to me, was known for having a high center of balance, and rolling under extreme conditions.

I braked while they tumbled sideways, end over end. Bags of corpses went flying, and so did the ork. I did my best not to run any of the bodies over; didn’t care if I clipped him, though. I slowed, they slid to a stop.

I left my headlights on and circled wide, Colt in hand. The ork was nowhere to be seen, the driver—a human, same facial tat, similar ugly disposition—had squirmed from the wreckage, bleeding, with a big Ares Predator in his hand. He had one hand up against the glare, kept the Predator trained on my Ford, waiting to me to silhouette myself.

Instead, I poked him in the back of the head with my muzzle, and pointedly thumbed back the hammer.

“Let’s talk. I just want to ask you a—”

He was really, really stupid.

In fairness, maybe he was just in shock from the crash. Maybe he was high on something. Maybe he thought—despite the fact I’d just run him off the road, and had a gun to his head—I wouldn’t kill him. Maybe he thought he was wired up fast enough to do the impossible. Maybe he was just crazy as hell and figured he couldn’t die.

He rolled and spun, tried to bring the Predator around to bear on me.

I had to. I double-tapped, two to the head.

“You dumb fuckin’ bastard.” I glowered, put one in his chest just to make myself feel better, stepping backward to try and avoid some splash. I glared down at him, mad at the bastard for being such a mad bastard.

I pocketed his commlink—after I found it ten meters back, he must’ve had it out on the console before the crash—and searched for the ork. He wasn’t there. He wasn’t dead, wasn’t unconscious, wasn’t groaning in pain. He was gone, and I wasn’t the elven ranger Gentry’s Matrix icon so desperately wanted to be: hell if I could track a guy on concrete.

Fuck. 

Waste of a night.

I got back in my Ford and took off before Knight Errant showed up, just in case they were ever going to. I had scuffs on my paint, scratches across the hood and front, and a few fractures on the windshield to show for the night’s effort. I knew where some of their drop-offs were, but now that they were burned, they’d change ’em. 

They were assholes, by and large, not idiots. They’d change ’em.

Out of ideas and with sunrise threatening, I headed home. I needed to sleep, needed to come up with a fresh idea. Minirth’s ghost would have to wait another day.

CHAPTER 29

It was pushing noon when I came to, sprawled out on my mattress, stiff as hell. I couldn’t be sore, my body chemistry didn’t allow for it, but I could sure as hell be stiff.

I checked my side with a grimace and the bathroom mirror; the stabs were as healed as I could get them. One of the laws of magic was that you could only magically treat any given injury once. I’d done a half-assed job of it the night before, but it was what I had. The puncture wounds were raw, red, scarring over, but they weren’t bleeding, at least.

Breakfast—lunch?—was a couple protein shakes, washed down with a beer. My windows were still plywood. My suit was still dirty. My apartment was still cold and empty-feeling. I grabbed another beer, a full stomach being a happy stomach, and threw myself into my desk chair to check messages.

Pink had touched base with a quick message saying he’d hoped I’d gotten home in one piece, and attached a few missing persons files from his neck of the woods, maybe helping out. Tillman left me a message offering to take care of my parking tickets if I dropped the fifty he owed me. Chase: Errant Knight sent me an exciting update in septuplicate, because Trace thought she was hilarious, and enjoyed subscribing me to mailing lists.

One, though, one was from Kosuke Tomizawa, Oyabun of the Kenran-Kai, Puyallup’s friendly neighborhood Japanese mafia.

Oh.

I shot a glance to my internal chronometer, cussed, and started getting dressed.

He was on his way here. Now. I’d woken up just in time, had maybe five minutes to get ready for a lunch meeting, as it turned out.

I kept one eye on my cameras while scrabbling to tuck in my shirt—no time for a tie—and just barely had it all done in time. I heard the high-pitched whine of street bikes outside, glanced from my one actual-glass window to the camera and confirmed the new arrivals.

The last time I’d seen Blue Tigers—a two-bit street gang, a minor league feeder-team that funneled thugs into the Kenran-Kai proper—outside my window, they’d been lining up with machine pistols to try and kill my client and me. This time, two of them sat just below my window, eyes on the street, while one apiece pulled up just in front of my two external cameras. One gave me a cheeky salute, in fact. They were letting me know they knew, politely showing their hand, making it clear they were aware of my security, and that they were allowing me to see them.

It wasn’t the punks on the Yamaha Rapiers and Suzuki Mirages I was paying attention to, right now, despite their bold blue hair, their neon-glowing frames, their openly worn katanas and slung machine pistols.

It was the Phaeton limousine that rolled up, the Rolls-Royce that pulled up to the curb, smoothly gliding through the city like a shark through the ocean, and stopping right out front of my place.

I stuffed my hat on my head, dragged my coat on, and trotted down the stairs.

“Mr. Kincaid.” Tomizawa’s driver stood at the door, crisp and neat, polite, impeccably sharp in her black-and-white suit, no tattoos showing, no weapon visible. I was pretty sure she could kill all four of the Blue Dragon punks without taking off her little chauffeur hat, if she wanted.

She opened the door and I clambered inside, ducking my head, removing my hat as my eyes adjusted to the comfortably dim lighting.

It was nice, if you’re into amazing legroom, real leather sets, room for the whole Ares bikini team to frolic, top-end electronics consoles, embedded tridscreens, more armor than my Ford, a built-in wet bar, and all sorts of other stuff commonly associated with words like ‘opulence’ and ‘luxury.’ Last I’d checked, a new Phaeton could’ve paid my rent for about ten years.

It was a Phaeton I’d poached my Americar’s ridiculous engine from, though, so I felt almost a kinship with Tomizawa. I was practically in the Owners Club, right?

“Tomizawa-sama,” I gave the man himself a nod, the closest to a bow I could manage, though right now sitting down would be my excuse.

“Mr. Kincaid.” I didn’t get an honorific in return, but hadn’t really been expecting one.

“Dine with me,” he said, and it wasn’t an offer I was expected to refuse.

Tomizawa was an older guy, maybe twenty years my senior, but still trim, still fit. His hair was neat and short, his mustache clipped precisely, his suit impeccable, stylish, and expensive. One of his bodyguards—the magician, who I’d met the hard way, barely taking him out with me, Ariana, Skip, and Trace—sat in the back with us, offering up plates of food.

The ride was smooth enough that I didn’t have any excuse. A little swing-arm tray-table popped up from somewhere, and I had a plate of masterfully rolled sushi in front of me, porcelain chopsticks to try my luck with. I was a cheap-plastics-at-the-noodle-bar kind of guy, but I held my own. Tomizawa’s every movement was precise, certain, efficient. There was no wasted energy to him, no sloppiness.

He was a man working very, very hard to hold together Seattle’s bottom-of-the-barrel Yakuza organization, and by all accounts he was pulling it off. Tomizawa had been the Kenran-Kai’s sole leader since their formation maybe half a decade ago, the only Oyabun, ever, of this newly-formed clan put together by Seattle’s Yakuza rejects, warriors dishonored by a master’s death, soldiers plagued by addictions and other flaws, soldiers stained by being metahuman or less than purely Japanese. They got the Yak’s shit jobs, ran the Yak’s shit districts, but Tomizawa was making a go of it. Reining in rabble like the Blue Dragons, filling his ranks with cast-offs from old regimes, he was making it work, making a play on Puyallup, steadily taking, and taking, and taking from Enzo and his Uncle Joseph.

And then there was me, the stupid prick stuck in the middle.

I swallowed my last little roll, slurped at something sweet in a little saucer-cup—shit, but I was out of the loop on Japanese table etiquette, but Tomizawa’d sipped his, right?—and waited for him to finish eating. If I’d committed some grievous sin, he didn’t kill me for it, so at least I had that going for me.

“Mr. Kincaid,” he said again, after his magician had reached out and removed Tomizawa’s tray, then plucked mine away, too. “What do you want from me?”

Well. Lunch time was over.

“I’m looking into a murder. It’s led me to some dark places. Ghouls, vampires. Trouble. They tend to nest up, tend to hide out, in the Barrens, or in places they can reach from the Barrens. They also tend to be sloppy, as often as not. I was hoping you could help me pinpoint their location, remo—”

“Mr. Kincaid.” He cut me off, not having to raise his voice, just having to open his mouth. “What do you want from me?”

“I want your help to get some people-eating bastards out of our district.”

“No.”

“No, as in you won’t he—”

“No, as in that’s not what you want from me.”

Goddammit, more fucking riddles and cuteness and people talking in circles. I just glared, didn’t trust myself to speak up. Not without Ari at my back, not without Adversary to help me against his combat mage.

“Mr. Kincaid.” Tomizawa spoke again, voice soft, almost gentle, mild, patient. Like I was a child. “What do you want from me?”

“Honest answer?”

He lifted his eyebrows, daring me to do so.

“I want you out of my city. I want you and your kind to go away and leave the rest of us alone. You, Enzo, everybody. No Kenran-Kai, no Gianellis, none of your bosses from the Shotozumi-gumi, none of his bosses from the Finnigans. Hell, no Ancients or Chulos, no Reality Hackers, no Blue Dragons, while we’re at it. No one out to hurt and take and steal and scare, no one bleeding the district dry for the money they need to bribe councilmen, who let them go back to bleeding the district dry.”

I shrugged.

“But I know I can’t get that. I know that Christmas ain’t ever gonna come. I know you people’ll never be out of my house. So, what I try to settle for, what I hope we can reach, is an arrangement. A compromise. You make your money, but you keep your trouble to the soldiers. You only kill each other. You only hurt each other. You take your little turf wars out on the other syndicates, and you leave the actual people alone.”

“Then we are not so different, you and I, detective.”

“My apartment’s about the size of your limo here, so yeah. I was just about to say we had a lot in common.”

“Do not allow your impudence to get the better of you, Mr. Kincaid.” Tomizawa’s features didn’t change, his brow didn’t furrow, he didn’t frown. He just spoke calmly, matter-of-factly. “I am being reasonable and complimentary, especially considering the circumstances under which we first met.”

Yeah, that. When I’d killed a bunch of his dudes, trashed his base, stolen his working girls, then demanded he return a kidnapping victim to me. In public. It’d been a busy night.

“Detective, you and I want the same things. We want business to run smoothly. We want as little disruption as possible, as little destruction as possible, as little conflict as possible. My interests in this district are purely financial. I don’t want to alienate the people of Puyallup, or hurt them, or be bothered by them.”

“You just want to rent ’em working girls, sell ’em drugs and chips, collect their paychecks in gambling houses, loan ’em money when they’re desperate, buy their elected officials, all that sort of thing?”

“Yes, exactly. You see me as a problem, Mr. Kincaid, but it’s the nature of the people in your home that create that problem. I offer goods and services, they purchase them. It is simple. It is business. There is no malice in it, and there need not be any cruelty. Tell me, detective, whose neighborhoods are bloodier, mine or Enzo Gianelli’s?”

Fuck.

“Enzo’s.”

“Whose neighborhoods are cleaner?”

“Yours.”

“Who maintains order in the districts he oversees, who hires from within the community, who has opened his traditionally…conservative…organization to hire women, to hire metahumans, to employ magicians such as yourself?”

“You’re never going to convince me you’re good for this place.”

“And you, detective, are never going to convince me you’re just a humble ‘private dick,’ instead of being a linchpin of the community, a regular face, a figurehead. Your low opinion of me, Mr. Kincaid, I try not to take personally. Your low opinion of the Kenran-Kai, however, hurts my bottom line.”

The Phaeton coasted, slowing down, then stopped smoothly.

“I want to help you, Mr. Kincaid. I want to rid this district—my home, now, though perhaps not so fiercely and totally as it is yours—of menaces like ghouls, if I can. This place—” He nodded out the window. “This place may be of some interest to you in such an investigation. But were I you, detective, I would be well gone from here by sundown.”

The doors unlocked, his driver appeared and opened it. There was no clearer message than that. Get out. Snoop around. Fuck off.

I held out a hand, instead. I didn’t want to, but I had to. He’d given me something. Even if he insisted it was a gift, insisted it was out of concern for the well-being of the neighborhood, insisted it didn’t come with strings attached, I couldn’t let him think I thought the same. I wasn’t wired that way.

“If this pans out, I owe you one,” I said as he shook it.

I stuffed my hat back on as his Phaeton glided away, as his escort of Blue Dragons roared off, accelerating like the children they were.

I knew the streets I was on. I knew what sort of things happened in these abandoned rental facilities, these empty warehouses. I thought I knew who—what?—did business in them. It was time to find out, though, for sure. 

I had a good six hours for the sun to keep the worst monsters at bay, right?

CHAPTER 30

I started with the dumpsters, the trash piles, the garbage heaps. Not just because of the night before, but because that’s half of a PI’s job. You roll up your sleeves, you dig in the trash, you see what you see. Sometimes you find a gun, a burner commlink, a used condom. Sometimes you find a corpse, bloody clothes, half-burned photographs. It’s never clean and never fun, but it’s often useful.

Here? Nothing. Nothing worthwhile, at least. Burnt one-shot BTL chips, used syringes, food wrappers, sure. Nothing exciting. Nothing I was after.

I headed inside, letting my cyberoptics account for the darkness. BTL heads and squatters scattered, grumbling, praying, scurrying away. I tugged a protein shake out of a coat pocket, waited to see who’d slow down, who’d be curious.

She was a heartbreaker, a dwarven girl of maybe fifteen, with knots in her hair and some scars on her face. She wore a baggy jacket, pants with holes in them, carried a small canvas sack.

“Hiya, kiddo,” I held up the shake, let her see it, let her see it wasn’t opened.

“Whatchoo want for it, mister?”

“Just answers, doll.” I went ahead and tossed it to her, underhand, easy. I took a step toward her when I did, closing the gap so I could lower my voice.

“My questions’re about ghouls.”

She gulped half the shake down, keeping one eye on me while she did, and it went wider when I asked. She came up for air, shaking her head.

“Don’t know much,” she said after licking her lips, because wiping them clean with the back of her hand meant wasting food. “I know they’re around. Everyone does. Near here. Under here.”

“You know how they come and go? You know their in-and-outs?”

Another gulp, another head shake.

“No one does. No one that comes back out.”

I nodded.

“All right, kid. All right.” I eyed her, frowned. She was so young. How’d she get here?

“The name’s Jimmy. Jimmy Kincaid. You ever hear anything good—not just these guys, just something interesting, y’know—you head uptown a little, yeah? Near the district buildings. It’s not far. There’s a noodle joint there, good an’ spicy. I’ll hook you up with some grub, you share what you hear, okay?”

“Gem.”

“Hmm?”

“My name’s Gem. I know some stuff about one of ’em. One of the biters, I mean. If we go there now, can I get some noodles?”

We took a walk. We had time to kill, a long way to go to get back to my apartment, or more specifically the Thai joint downstairs.  She told me she was from the California Free State, a runaway from the East Bay, headed this direction ’cause her dad was back home, and her big brother’d left there a year earlier and come to Seattle. Gem’d been here six months looking for Daniel, but had no real leads. She’d gotten cut early on from a crazy old lady who wanted to stay the prettiest in the warehouse.

I walked slow, didn’t ask much, let her take her time with the walk and the conversation, let her enjoy some human company. I didn’t press. I didn’t have to, we had a good hike to get where we were going.  I told her about Ariana’s favorite cartoons, and her face lit up in a way that made my soul ache. I told her about Skip and Trace, and how they loved to take Ari out and show her new things. I told her about how I tried to do the right thing by this place, and how since she lived in Puyallup, I was looking after her now, too.

By the time we got there, Chanchai and Gamon were in their late-afternoon lull downstairs. They doted on Gem—were also glad to see me, after the week I’d had—and stuffed her full to bursting. We talked, Gem and me, her feet swinging like the little kid she was, dirty sneakers and torn pants, about tridshows and fast food joints we liked, whether Renraku or Mitsuhama had the coolest house-drones, about pop bands she loved and pop bands my Transys had to tell me about in secret so I could keep up.

“Tell me about your brother, kid?”

“I thought you wanted to know about ghouls.”

“I do. But you want to know about him. So, I’ll make you a deal.”

“You already made me a deal.”

I grinned.

“Yeah, well, you got me there. But I’ll make you a new one, since you already ate the food before telling me about the Infected. You tell me what you’ve got on these pricks, I’ll look into your big brother for you, soon as I can. He’s got to be here somewhere, and if not there’s got to be a record of him. I know folks. Folks know me. I’ll help you find him, you’ll be back with him in no time.”

“What if he don’t want me?” Her voice sounded very small.

“Kid, you got here from Halferville to find him. He’d be an awful shitty brother to turn you out after that.”

“I mean ’cause of…”

“I know what you mean. Hush, and eat your yen-ta-fo.”

I couldn’t ditch chopsticks today, but that was all the meals had in common. Lunch had been dainty, gourmet sushi rolls with a Yakuza boss, dinner’d been spicy meats with a knifed-up little girl doing her best not to cry for half the meal. I had a hell of a life.

“There’s this guy,” she said, pushing her plate away when she was finally full, after Gamon’d stopped fluttering and refilling it. “Sammy Bones. He’s a bouncer, like, at a clinic. Beaver’s place.”

Beaver the Cleaver. I knew him. Knew how terrible a street doc he was, along with just bein’ a pretty lousy specimen of metahumanity. I nodded.

“Sammy Bones’s a ghoul. He’s…he’s scary. Even for one of them. Spooky, like. He’s real quiet, except when he wants to be loud. It’s like he…he likes scaring people, you know?  Sneaking up on them, then just being mean. He likes looking scary. Tattoos and piercings and stuff. But he has a job. He’s like their boss, or whatever? But he always says he has a boss. He has money, but still no one likes him. Everyone clears out when he shows up. He always laughs and chomps at us. Like he’s gonna infect us, or…”

“I know. I know his type. Sammy Bones. Beaver’s Dam. Got it, Gem. You’re a good kid.”

“Yeah,” she rolled her eyes. Blue, too pretty for the place I’d found her. “Fat lot of good that’s done me.”

I couldn’t just send her out the door, couldn’t kick her back toward that warehouse. I’d given her what we’d agreed, but I wasn’t going to send her back into the drizzle and the darkness. 

“Hey. You know the Loveland Bump & Sleep?”

Those eyes turned hurt, her face opened up for just a second, scared, disappointed. Then she turned cold, angry. Closed. 

“No,” she said, looking away, reaching for a fork—no more adorable fumbling with chopsticks—to snatch up as much food as she could before she left—and probably stab me with if I tried to touch her. She was a smart kid.

“No, no! Not like that, Gem. I don’t mean it like that, on my mother’s grave. I just know who runs it. I’ve got a room there. A safehouse. You use my key, no one there’ll bug you. I swear.”

Enzo ran the joint. The Bump & Sleep was just as classy as it sounded, but I’d meant what I told her. Trace had modified the maglock for me, after I’d first rented it—permanently, by saving her life—from Enzo, back in the day. No one could, would, bother her there.

I held up the keycard, then slid it halfway across the table to her.

“It’s yours, if you want it. You just promise me you use it, okay? Don’t sell it to nobody, don’t let me hear about you in some friggin’ pawn shop. Room number’s on there. There’s even a little grub stashed away, some dehydrated junk I got, fell offa truck. You crash there a little bit, while I work on this thing, okay?”

She eyed me—wary again, like a dog who’d been kicked a few too many times—but reached out and took it. A little of the light came back when she smiled.

“I’ll walk there,” she said, stowing the key and answering my next question before I asked it. “I ain’t soft, Mr. Kincaid. I got here from Halferville, didn’t I?”

“You did. You scoot now, Gem. Get yourself a roof, I’ll get to work on the other thing, okay?”

Chanchai smiled at her from the kitchen, Gamon shoved a little doggie bag of dumplings into her hand before she left.  I sighed and hauled myself to my feet, nodded gratefully at the Thai couple.

Good people.  Puyallup’s got ’em, too.

“Add the tab to my rent, yeah?”

They waved me off and I headed back out onto the street. I watched Gem go, then climbed into my Ford. It was time to go back to work.

CHAPTER 31

I didn’t go straight to Beaver’s Dam. Not while the sun was still up. Ghouls didn’t like it, so this Bones knucklehead wouldn’t be there. No, I headed in the general direction of the Weazely residence, and called them up on the way over. Hank and Darlene weren’t married, but my odds of finding him there were still pretty high. It’d only been a half a week or so, right? Odds were good they were still in that honeymoon phase.

“Jimmy K! How’s biz,” she said, smiling.

“I’m fine, thanks. Busy. Working on something. Hank around?”

She didn’t roll her eyes, cuss, or throw anything, so I knew he was, and knew my guess about their lovey-dovey arrangement was right on cue. She smiled again—brighter than when she’d seen me—and went and got him.

His ugly mug filled the screen, looking nervous, like he was about to get in trouble for something. Most of the time, he was.

“What’s the word, Jimmy?”

“You free for a little? Meet me at the Armadillo, my treat?”

 “Yeah, sure. Sure, I can do that,” he said, after first casting a glance off-screen, getting the go-ahead from his old lady. 

“I’ll see you there in ten,” I shut off the call, spinning up my Transys to find another contact, dial another number. I had the start-up of a plan forming, and Weazely was actually going to make himself useful for once, I hoped.

A nighttime hotspot for hackers of all stripes, the Armadillo was a neighborhood institution if you were a tech-geek, which I wasn’t, or if you lived nearby, which Hank did. When he just wanted a drink, he hit up the ’Dillo. He was only a few buildings away, so he was already waiting inside by the time I showed up, and’d already opened a tab, natch.

“Gimme a…what is that, an old fashioned?” I said, settling onto the stool next to his. “Yeah, one of those.”

He lifted his glass in a toast, but I didn’t give him time to stay comfortable. I had too much shit to do.

“You get fired from Eta Engineering yet?”

“What? Christ, Jimmy. What a hurtful way to open a conversa—”

“Did you? Or you still got a gig?”

“I’ve smoothed over recent—indiscretions with management, yes.” He sniffed, taking a drink to make himself look together. “They understand that I’m struggling with a gambling addiction, and they’re willing to work with me.”

“You begged, Darlene cussed, and they brought you back on?”

“Yeah, basically.” He gave me a little grin.

“Good. I need a favor.”

He didn’t speak up right away, so I did. A friendly reminder.

“You promised me, Weazely. Not a week ago, you promised me something good. I didn’t hand you over to Enzo, I got your debt cut in half, I got your old lady a little money to sweeten her up. You owe me.”

He nodded. Good. Prick.

“Now listen. You’re in trouble at work, so I know you get the shit jobs.” Like Enzo Gianelli got the shit jobs from his work, like Tomizawa got the shit jobs from his. I was surrounded by people with shit jobs, and all of ’em had a steadier paycheck than me. What’d that say about my life?

“It ain’t shit jobs, Jimmy.” He looked a little hurt at that. “I do important work!”

“You literally work with shit, Weazely.”

“It’s honest work, though.” He straightened up.

“Fine, yeah. Okay. You’re a good worker, let’s say, and they value you, let’s say, and it’s a noble fucking profession to fly a maintenance drone into a tunnel filled with shit.”

“Thank you.” He sniffed again, missing my mood.

“So I need you to fly a maintenance drone into a tunnel filled with shit. A lot. I need you to be my eyes, Hank. I’m looking for something, somewhere down there. Somewhere you boys don’t normally look. I’ll message you with the details, but I need you to pull some recon for me, quick as you can.”

“That’s a lot of ground to cover, Jimmy! You know how many kilometers of tunnels there are under this city?!”

“Haven’t the faintest.”

“Well, me neither, but it’s a fucking lot, Jimmy. That sort of thing’ll take time!”

“So get started, Hank,” I plucked the glass from his hands and finished it off. “Clock’s ticking. Go.”

He gave me a pathetic glare, then slid off his stool. He wasn’t a bad guy, Hank. He knew when he owed someone. He’d find a way.

“I’ll pay for your drink, don’t sweat it,” I said as he shuffled off. “Get goin’, Hank. Hug Darlene, and do good work.”

I spun on the stool, waved the bartender over.

“Another one, and keep my tab open. I’ve got another buddy comin’, he’s just running a little late. You guys got protein shakes here?”

CHAPTER 32

Gentry hadn’t jogged over here—for once—because I’d called him on such short notice. He had a motorcycle, like probably half the shadowrunners in Seattle, but at least he hadn’t come leaping off a rooftop. He pushed his smartgoggles onto his forehead as he came in, taking in the place with something like reverence.

The Armadillo’s reputation apparently preceded it.

The way he was eyeballing half the folks sitting here, he must’ve seen something I didn’t. I knew I wasn’t missing anything—not with the betel gum, the Sideways, the headware—in realspace, so I poked at my Transys and toggled the augmented reality to ‘on.’

Jesus, Buddha, and Zeus, this place was a madhouse.

The half-real digital overlay turned the Armadillo into a tech-geek’s wet dream. The picture behind the bar turned into a looming digital statue, a monument that was clearly someone’s Matrix avatar. More of the bar’s patrons than not—including Gentry, natch—took on their own digital properties, clothed in computer-generated imagery, turned half-animal, half-magical, coated in gleaming metallics or glowing cloaks of data.

My own avatar was almost stock, tailored for me—back when she’d given a damn—by Trace, last time I’d had my headware patched and upgraded. I used a basic Noir.0 avatar, but she adjusted the imaginary suit to keep it rumpled and worn-in, and had oversized the ears a little. Gentry probably loved that last part.

The human decker was, again, an elven ranger, all dressed up for the geek prom. He brightened up when he saw a protein drink waiting for him, and slid onto Hank’s recently-vacated stool.

“Telegit thelemsa,” he said, back all stiff like he was about to bow to me.

“Seriously?”

“I was just saying hello, Kincaid.”

“No, you weren’t just say—y’know what, never mind? Fine.” I groused, but my Transys was pestering me to respond in kind. 

“Siselle. Thelemsa-ha,” I growled back as best I could.

Gentry looked like a schoolgirl about to scream and start clapping at a tea party.

“Enough, though. Knock it off with that stuff. I ain’t your kind of elf, you dig? I only know that stuff ’cause of a chipjack, all right?”

He looked disappointed—beneath the AR overlay of his ridiculous ears, I again noticed that his own seemed a little pointed, and wondered if he was saving up for those cosmetic surgeries a little at a time—so I figured I’d just go straight to business instead of hassling him over his Tír-fueled fixation.

“I got another quick one for ya.” I set the road-worn commlink on the bar and slid it his way, broken screen and all, fresh from the scene of the Rebel crash.

“Hundred again?” He looked down at it—nose wrinkling at the damage done to even a low-end commlink—and then dragged his gaze up to mine.

“Sure.”

“Deal,” he said, almost as quickly as I did. The commlink blinked on, Gentry’s hand drifted over to tap at the ornately filigreed elven bracer that covered his actual cyberdeck.

“Annnnd done.”

Just like that.

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

I shook my head, smiling, sending him a credit transfer.

“You have full admin access now. Anything on there, you can see. You need me to walk you through the proce—”

“I’m good, kid. I know how to use ’em, just not how to crack ’em open.”

“You, uh, you didn’t actually try that, did you?” Gentry’s cartoon-big eyes flickered down to the broken case.

“What? No. It was in a wreck, is all.”

“Okay.” He sipped his protein shake and glanced around the place again. I wondered how many avatars he recognized, and how many recognized him. Reputations counted. Even if they were reps I didn’t get, reps I didn’t appreciate, I know they were important. Those AR overlays were heavy with names.

“Listen, there’s another thing I’m lining up. A bigger one. A proper hack.”

“Like the school?”

“Bigger.”

He raised one impossibly-tall, impossibly-long, impossibly-elven eyebrow.

“City power. City sanitation. Stuff like that.”

“City services aren’t easy hacks, Jimmy.”

“I know.”

“I don’t think you do.”

“So enlighten me?”

“Those’re some hardcore servers you’re talking about. Regular targets. Hard targets. Lots of folks want to make the news, Jimmy, make a name for themselves. If you can turn off the lights to half the city, if you can shut off the water, if you can overflow every toilet in Tacoma? That’s a way to get recognized, hardcore, in the hacker community.”

“That’s a way to kill people,” I corrected.

“Right, ’cause no one gets hurt in your line of work?” Another delicate eyebrow quirked, shutting me up. “Anyway, black hats…they live for that shit. Those big hacks, those juicy targets. You want to get a crew together for something like that, it’ll be…”

“Expensive?”

His AR self flashed perfect elven teeth.

“Tricky. Tricky to thin the herd, separate the sharp from the dull, the smart from the wannabes. You’ll get lots of volunteers, sure. Lots.” He nodded, certain of that, “But you don’t want the psychos. You don’t want the poseurs. You don’t want the plants, the undercover cops, the corporate spiders.”

“So who do I want?”

“Who’ve you got?”

I shrugged.

“You, so far.” I sent a mental command through my headware, shared my contacts list with him. “And whoever you like from that. Or, well, whoever you like from anywhere.”

He sucked down the rest of his protein shake, smiling.

“I can get you more. Good ones. Lots of good ones. I’ll be your fixer. Handle it, organize it.” He was getting hyper, now, my PeopleWatcher told me, and so did my magical power of common sense. His SupraThyroid was doing a number on him, or maybe just his hacker confidence. “I’ll get you a crew together. We all get some cred for it, I get the most, you get your job done. Everyone wins.”

“If you all can pull it off.”

“This is gonna be so awesome!”

“Yeah. Awesome’s just what I was going for.”

He missed my sarcasm; he was already busy scanning the bar.

“I’m gonna grab a smoke and some air, kid. You…get started, yeah?”

Gentry already was, reading user profiles, looking for Matrix handles he recognized. I’m not sure he even noticed when I headed outside.

The sun’d gone down, but it was still pleasantly cool, not yet cold. A big moon smiled down through a crack in the clouds, the wind was down, so the ash was settled. It was nice. Silver and grey and black, through and through, once you glared up past the neon and the AR advertisements, looked up past the streetlights and just saw the night for what it was.

“Nice night, huh?”

I saw someone off to my side, but didn’t really look, stamped down the Sideways and the paranoia and all that to just nod. They were quiet, whoever they were. I hadn’t heard them walk up to me, too tangled up in my thoughts and my worries and the streetlights and shadows.  Their voice was rough, they sounded like a hard drinker, heavy smoker. Simple people. Salt of the earth.

“I’ve had worse nights, yeah,” I conceded.

“That’ll change,” they said. The wind shifted. They smelled like shit.

I flicked my gaze over and saw him clearly. Bald and hairless as only a ghoul can be, misshapen face, ugly mouth full of ugly teeth. He had a row of spikes implanted on the top of his chromedome, like a mohawk made of silver studs. He had piercings and mods all over, but most notably the facial tats, the stark white skull leering over his face.  

He punched at me with his claws, just driving his hand into my gut—literally—to the wrist, claws parting my armored shirt like it wasn’t there, stabbing into me, probing, wriggling, reaching inside me and squirming against my innards. It lifted me off my feet. I felt his nails scrape against my spine.

“Hngh,” I managed, falling backward off his bloodslicked hand, drawing my Colt as I tumbled, legs going noodly. My idiot fucking biomonitor let me know something was wrong.

I fell on my butt, pulling the trigger as I went down, bashed my head on the sidewalk. He slipped the gunshots like I normally slipped punches, and then he was all over me—no, two of them, maybe three, Sideways picking out enough details I could tell I wasn’t just seeing double in my shock—kicking and clawing. I was in the middle of a gang beat down crossed with a hyena pack. I didn’t aim, just jerked the trigger again and again.

I didn’t cover up, didn’t roll with the hits. There was no way to meaningfully protect yourself from this sort of thing, all a fella could hope to do was take someone with him. I just shot. Colt waving above me, smartlink dancing wildly as I was jostled, kicked, rolled from side to side by the sheer force of their attacks. My suit and coat fell off me in shreds, blood spraying as they opened up a bicep, tore at my shoulder, slashed a thigh, my Corpsman dutifully alerting me to each new laceration, politely suggesting a bandage might be in order.

The slide locked back on empty, but my TacWhisper hadn’t heard a single gunshot because I had this weird ringing in my ears ever since the first couple boots to my head. I let my Corpsman’s warning messages blanket my field of vision, but before it did I saw the ghouls bolting. Other shadows chased them. I lay there, bleeding out and coughing.

If I’m being honest? Mostly…bleeding…out.

My pop-ups went black, because everything else went black.

I was alone in the dark. There was no pinprick of light that I willed myself toward, no white room with a Dweller on the Threshold to taunt me. There was no Adversary, there was no Ariana. There was nothing and no one. I was cold. Very cold…

Then, I wasn’t. Suddenly, in an eyeblink, I came to halfway across town, stripped to the skivvies. I jolted upright with a grunt, clawed at my hip for a Colt and a wand that weren’t there—were, in fact, on a coffee table just in front of me—and then registered where I was. I hadn’t been there in a dozen years, but I’m not wired to forget much.

I was in the Hermetic Order of the Auric Aurora’s primary headquarters, the lounge above the Blue Moon, a lore shop.

I threw off my covers and pawed at my belly, looking, searching, praying, and feeling it smooth. There wasn’t a ghoul in there, up to his elbow in my guts. I was whole. Unblemished. Whoever’d done the casting, they did a better job with that—the gaping gut wound—than I’d done on myself, with the little poke-poke-poke series of shallow, clean stabs; the knife wounds still felt tight, still looked raw. My stomach was fine. My arms, my legs. I was fine. More naked than not, but fine.

“Mr. Kincaid.” Dr. Reynolds materialized from the room’s darkest corner, his usual faintly disappointed, thoroughly professorial look on his face. He sat in a lounge chair, fingers steepled, a fresh set of clothes folded in his lap.

“It would seem that the investigation is not going well.”

CHAPTER 33

He tossed me the clothes and I got dressed, side twinging as I reached and twisted.

“You don’t seem to have been bitten,” he said, and I felt the same relief he seemed to.

“Their claws weren’t much better, mind. Filthy things. We were quite liberal with the applications of assorted healing magics that should assist against infection, but—” He shuddered. “Just the thought of it. Of the things they had under their nails, to say nothing of the Kreiger strain having gotten into your wounds, the way you shot some of them. You’re lucky, Mr. Kincaid.”

“Yeah, thanks.”  Lucky was just how I felt, after having a ghoul wrist-deep in my fucking belly.

“‘Lucky’ is not a compliment.”

There was the Reynolds I was used to.

“‘Lucky’ means you should have died, or worse. ‘Lucky’ means you don’t deserve to have lived. ‘Lucky’ is, as I recall, how your last noteworthy interaction with the Infected ended up.”

“Yeah.” I gave him a flat look. “Thanks.”

He frowned at how I holstered my Colt first, then my wand. I’d known Reynolds almost half my life, and he’d always wished I’d favored the latter over the former. He was a bit of a magical supremacist, truth be told, favoring Talent over much else.

“You’re wrong, by the way,” I said as I slumped back onto the couch, feeling tired just from the effort of standing, getting dressed, stuffing my things back into my pockets. “About the investigation.”

“This is your idea of progress? Being torn to ribbons by a pack of scavengers? Almost dying?”

“Yup,” I said with a nod, pulling out my crumpled pack of Targets. I fished around in the box, checked on a few, saw which troopers’d survived the beating and which ones hadn’t. I found two that looked okay, flipped one into my mouth and offered him the other just from how he was eyeballing the whole procedure.

“Thank you, no. I don’t indulge like I used to. Special occasions only.”

I shrugged and stuffed the pack back in, hauled out my lighter.

“Suit yourself,” I said around the process of firing it up, “But this might be worth celebrating.”

“Your miraculous recovery?” He sniffed. “Hardly. Standard healing magics, hasty but thorough, delivered by myself and Dr. Pike.”

The illustrious head of our illustrious order, Dylan Pike, ThD. Whoopty-doo, I should’ve asked him to sign my ruined torso.

“No, not that. The attack.”

“Explain.”

It wasn’t a question—he didn’t like questions—it was a demand for clarification. I could just picture it scribbled in red in the margins of an essay on summoning or energy transference from the astral to the elemental.

“It means I’m makin’ progress, Doc.” I slapped my lighter shut with a flick of my wrist. “It means I’m asking the right questions, pissing off the right people. It means I’m on the right trail.”

All of which was bullshit, mind, but Reynolds was a client, and sometimes you tell the client what they want to hear. I didn’t know if I was after the right pack of ghouls. I didn’t know if the right pack of ghouls were after me. I just knew someone was, even if I couldn’t say the trail was leading to Nimbus, really. But Reynolds didn’t need to know that.

He seemed satisfied, or at least as satisfied as a sourpuss like him ever got. He showed it by standing up, scarecrow thin and taller’n me, his small stores of compassion and worry apparently exhausted.

“I’ll be off, then, and leave you to your triumph,” he said. “It’s very late, Mr. Kincaid. Your friend is still downstairs, last I heard.”

I let him go, took my time, savored the tobacco and the quiet for as long as I could. I hadn’t been in the lounge for a while. It was lined in certificates, plaques of honor, a few framed photographs. There was a portrait of Dr. Minirth up over the table, with a small black ribbon tied around it.

“I’m workin’ on it, Doc,” I promised him as I stood up, stubbed out my Target in their ashtray, and glanced at the table.

A simple three-card Tarot reading was laid out on it, most of the cards upside down from my point of view. It may’ve been Reynolds, but in this place, in the Order’s headquarters above a shop like the Blue Moon, it could’ve been just about anyone.

I saw the Tower, upside down because I was looking at the whole spread from the wrong side of the table. Ruin. Change. Chaos. Crisis. It made me think of my ruined office, my ruined life, and I wondered if Reynolds had seen it and thought about the loss to his academic department, to the ivory tower of our Hermetic Order. The Star card caught the light just right, and the naked woman looked just like Ariana for an instant. Optimism. Generosity. Hope. Without her handy, I was running low on all three. The Moon glared down at wild wolves and dogs near some water, and instead I saw snarling ghouls and bloody-fanged vampires wading in sewer tunnels. Tension. Confusion. Fear.

I didn’t know who the reading was for, and I wasn’t in the mood to lay out a proper spread for myself—I’d done it before, mind; Black Magic used whatever worked, and sometimes the Tarot seemed to—but on a whim I reached for the deck and just flipped the top card for myself.

The Juggler, the Mountebank, the Magician, posing with his wand in the air, but in reality the lowest-ranked trump card. Perfect. I snorted and gave it a casual toss onto the table, sent it spinning, no right-side-up or upside-down, turning my back and heading toward the stairs before I saw where it landed in relation to the other three. Energy. Movement. Personal Power.

What a crock of shit.

Down on the lower landing, Gentry was doing push-ups.

I shook my head on my way down the stairs. “Little late for that, don’t you think?”

“Suprathyroid, bro. Gotta keep the thing busy,” he didn’t stop, just kept pushing away. “You know how it is.”

I really didn’t. Especially not on a night like this—actually an early morning, sun-up was maybe an hour away—when I felt about a hundred years old and beat half to hell.

“I stole your car, before you ask,” Gentry said, still pushing, dropping, pushing, dropping. “I didn’t think you’d mind. My bike wasn’t gonna cut it, I didn’t know where else to take you.”

“Here?”

“It was in your contacts.”

Oh, right.

“Well, thanks.”

“Null persp, raé.” He finally had the decency to stop working out, hopped nimbly to his feet, not even sweating. Friggin’ Alley Cat Express fitness whackos.  “If I let you get gutted like a fish, who’s gonna tell me what I’m looking for in this sweet megahack?”

“Yeah. So, last night?”

“Heard the scuffle. Me and a couple other celés ran outside and chased the ugly buggers off. They got away, but we clipped a couple, or you did, or both. They’ll think twice before they mug someone outside the Armadillo.”

“Wasn’t a mugging.”

“Oh?”

“They’re what we’re after on your sweet megahack. Ghouls, and their vampire boss.”

“Oh.” He sounded a little less upbeat about the whole thing. Remembering the feeling of those wriggling claws in my belly, it was hard to blame him.

“Just keep recruiting. Find who you gotta find, sell the prestige angle, give ’em the sizzle, not the steak. We’ll be hitting up city utilities, maybe with an in at Eta, depending how their system’s set up. Call me when you’ve got a crew together and I’ll get you more info, all right?”

“Yeah, sure.” He nodded, the pair of us heading for the door.

“You need a ride?” I figured the least I could do was offer him that, after he’d saved me. He must’ve left his bike down in Puyallup to do it. Unless the Armadillo staff’d really taken a shine to him or he had top-notch security installed, I gave it maybe even odds to still be there.

“Nah, I’m cool. I got a crash pad not far. A little run’ll do me some good.  Once I’m there, I’ll dive in VR, hit up a few hangouts, have a couple more interviews.”

“All right, kid. I’ll see ya. And hey,” I held out my hand. “Thanks, Gentry. I owe you one. A big one.”

CHAPTER 34

I spent part of the day looking through the cracked-open commlink. I opened it all at once, sifted through the files, I let my headware look for patterns, for clues, for repetition above anything else. I got addresses without names attached, names without addresses. No one with a helpful Tamanous next to their name, natch, no list of contacts full of Disassembler tags. I filed things away, regardless, held onto hope.

I called around, cops I’d known, cops I still knew, asked for leads, asked for them to check the drop-boxes I’d found. I leaned on every street doc I could think of, knowing as well as they did they were knee-deep in the organlegging. If they didn’t provide the parts, they bought them, and vice versa. More than one had a pack of ghouls on standby, more than one used Tamanous and the Disassemblers, even if they wouldn’t admit to it. I threatened, cajoled, schmoozed, joked, pressed, leaned, leaned, leaned. A few told me what they knew. Most didn’t. I understood. It was part of the business, sometimes, keeping secrets. I wasn’t a cop, but I was close, and they knew what’d happen if they flipped on such unsavory partners.

Things were starting to fall into place, though.

I got a mapsoft patch from Hank Weazely, which substantially improved my mood. It was a solid start, the sort of thing only Eta Engineering would care about; a layout of the known tunnels beneath the city, sewers, drainage, everything. Some were high-traffic, routinely worked on, well-maintained. Some weren’t. Some were on there in dotted lines, practically, no one sure what was still there, what had fallen apart, what was still working…but it was a start, and a really solid one. I sent him a happy little thumbs up icon, didn’t call him, just let him keep working.

I worked on a file in my head, updating it here and there, marking known hotspots.

A glance at my chronometer showed sundown getting close, so I headed out to my Ford and cut across the district toward Beaver’s Dam.

“Doc” Beaver—Lord knew if he’d ever been certified, as opposed to certifiable, like most street docs—was called that because of his chubby, round face, his brown hair and beard, and his tremendous overbite. A street name’s a street name, and he’d let that one stick.

No one was really mean about it, and if they ever were, they were an idiot. Insulting a street doc’s a good way to wake up missing some important parts. I pushed my luck more than most where black market clinics were concerned, because I had Ari to keep me in one piece, usually, and connections on the right side of the law that meant I could go to a real doctor, usually.

Most other folks living a life of violence, especially closer to the south end of Puyallup? They didn’t have that luxury. A street doc was what you had to patch you up when you got shot, upgrade your chrome when you weren’t fast enough, replace a lost limb with something flashy or flash-cloned. It paid to be respectful, but that didn’t always happen. Sometimes folks showed up at a street doc mid-crisis, out of their gourd, bleeding out, stressed out, high on adrenaline and success—or failure.

That’s where the muscle came in.

Most street docs kept a couple razorgirls or -guys on hand. Folks who got paid via augmentation as often as not, obviously scary-types, who basically worked like bouncers. They kept the peace, or they took a piece. Simple, brutal, ugly.

Beaver went another way. Instead of wasting combat chrome on his muscle, he had a couple ghouls working for him. It sent the same sort of threat, only uglier, when you stopped and thought about it.

So I sat and waited. I got there a half-hour before the sun went down, chomping on some streetmeat from closer to home, a little Irish coffee in the cup holder. I had a pretty good idea of what this Sammy Bones asshole looked like, I had the memory of how Gem’d been terrified at just saying his name, and I had a good little mad-on going. I figured I’d get a good look when he showed up to work, spend his shift comparing it to whatever databases and facial recognition I could dredge up thanks to my Transys, and then I’d see what data that gave me. Tail him home if I had to, y’know, subtle, detective-y stuff.

Then I saw him.

Chrome-flashing body mods. Bald head with implanted spikes in a mohawk crest. A white, leering skull tattooed over his face, almost glowing in the dark. 

Oh. Oh. So that was him.

Well, fuck subtle, then.

I floored it, turning the lights on at the last instant, just ’cause I wanted to see him gawk like a deer right before the push-bar took him out at the legs.

The bastard was slippery, though, quicker’n spit. He jumped and twisted at the last minute—he was so damn fast!—and the front end only just clipped him. Sammy went sprawling, though, because even being ‘just clipped’ by the grille of my Ford left someone feeling it. I swerved, not quite ramming straight into the abandoned storage facility Doc Beaver called an office. My tires squealed as I slapped it into reverse, new tires whining, kicking up smoke as they dragged the big car backwards, rear bumper—thanks, rear-end collision camera, for letting me see the look on his stupid face!—smashing into his shoulder just as he’d clambered to his knees.

He went flying again, and all I could think about was how it’d felt to have his filthy fucking hand clawing around inside my belly, fingers wiggling like I was a glove that almost fit just right.

I dragged my Colt out as I climbed out of my Ford and kicked the door shut. I walked toward him, angry, stiff-legged, methodical, and switched over to the Astral after I lined up the sights.

His aura flared with power—an adept, an adept for sure—and he started scrambling, moving faster than most folks who hadn’t just been run over twice. My Colt bucked in my hand, and he went rolling out of the way, my shot kicking up ash from the Puyallup pavement. I blinked my sight back over to the meatworld as he scrambled to his feet, eyes wide, staring at me in a moment of fight-or-flight.

I needed him to do the latter, so I shot him a little bit.

My slug tore into his gut, just to see how he liked it, because he hadn’t fastened shut the ballistic vest he was wearing as almost his only piece of clothing. He stumbled backward, face full of fangs twisted in a surprised little ‘o,’ and my Sideways tried to find a pattern in the splash of black blood he left.

“Hiya, Sammy.” I gave him a mean little grin as I lined up my sights again, “Nice night, huh?”

He turned and ran. I trotted after him, keeping him in sight but keeping my Colt ready as the alley-cat chase started. Whenever he looked over his shoulder, whenever I saw that white flash of his stupid facial tattoo, I snapped off a pot shot. I kept the pressure on. Even limping, even gut-shot, he was quick.

I knew I’d lost him when I rounded a corner and just found a manhole cover flung to one side, an open, steaming, sewer tunnel inviting me to hell.

I grinned and started my way back to Doc Beaver’s place. My Ford was still there, unmolested. I didn’t think it was because people on this end of Puyallup knew me, in fact, I was pretty sure it was ’cause they didn’t. All they saw was some loco bastard going after Beaver’s muscle and winning, and all they knew was they didn’t want a piece of that.

Colt still in hand, I shouldered open the door and found the chubby street doc himself. I had to ask him a couple questions about his employees.

CHAPTER 35

My apartment was a friggin’ circus behind the frosted JAMES KINCAID, PARANORMAL INVESTIGATOR on the door. Gentry’d helped himself to the maglock—well, fuckyouverymuch—and gone ahead and let everyone in, just ’cause I was running a little late. Beaver’d taken a little more work to open up than I’d thought he would, so sure, timeliness was on me, but I was still grouchy at the decker for taking liberties with my door.

I dragged him into the hallway by the scruff of his neck, my apartment a riot of colors and technobabble, even with my AR toggled back off. I tabbed my mono-filter to maximum, which at least turned down the chaos a little, but I had a crazy wave of haircuts, piercings, tattoos, cybernetics, electronics, and discarded junk food wrappers filling the place, including at least one cyberdeck sprawled open on my desk—my desk!—with two geeky girls hmm’ing and haw’ing over its guts.

“Hiya, Jimmy.” Gentry wriggled free of my grip, scowling and rubbing his neck. “Nice t’see you, too.”

“Did your geek squad stay outta my study?”

“C’mon, bro, don’t be all goronagee about it. Those geeks are here to do your wo—”

I got right up in his face, angrier than I meant to be.

“Did you stay out of my study?!”

“Jeeze, man! Yes. We stayed out of your study. Everyone’s here, everyone’s in the main room, office, kitchen, whatever.”

He looked away, but didn’t back off. He had some sand, at least. I tried to cool myself down.

“All right. Don’t break in again. And keep everyone out of there, you hear me? It’s private. Even more private.”

“Super private, yeah. I got it.” He looked sulky. I couldn’t blame him.

I leaned around the corner enough to peer inside. None of the hackers even looked up. I knew just one of ’em, the rest were his.

“So, who’ve we got?” I asked, trying to get him upbeat again. It worked.

“Goth chick with the sweet-ass Sony rig, the tweaked CIY-720?”

“I see a gal in black, sure.”

“It’s wiz, chummer, she’s got some overclockage going on like nuts, raw speed on her ’deck is through the roof, you won’t believe th—”

“I’m gonna save us both about ten minutes here, kid. You tell me who they are by how they look, maybe tell me what they do, okay? I don’t know or care how they do it, what specs they’ve got, or any of that.”

“Roger that, buzzkill. Her handle’s Bootleg Girl. Chickie used to be a pretty hardcore bro, streets say, specializing in forging passcodes and slinging mass-copied files, selling ’em cheap to rip off the corp-cops. She’s novahot now, though, and running a solid cyberdeck. BG’s got some passcodes that’ll help with the power company search, she’s our way in like Flynn. Just wants to get back at The Man, she’s in to expose the weaknesses inherent in the system, in an effort to steer the modern consumer away from being so reliant on a single insecure service provider.”

“A creepy academic-slash-activist. Fine. Next to her, the other gal?”

“The sizzlin’ hot piece of Jamaican bacon? That’s Voodoo Child. She used to be the tech support for some Carib pirate clan, got exiled over some drama-for-your-momma, so now she’s hanging here in Seattle. She’s only packing a Renraku Tsurugi, and she and BG are working on it right this nanosecond, but she melts IC like nobody’s business an’ don’t take no guff. Muscle, if things go sour.”

Muscle, right. She was fit enough, but still shapely, still curvy, hardly chrome-built or bulked-up like Skip. If she was muscle, it was clearly only in the Matrix.

“Pay?”

“She owes a favor to a Gator shaman, who wants her to fuck with Eta Engineering over something.”

“So free?”

“So free.”

“Great, she’s hired. I know the next guy.”

“Yeah, I was psyched when I saw you knew Hotspur. He’s gone goronit, but the raegh’s a legend back home.”

Back home. So Gentry was from the Tír. That explained a lot. It couldn’t’ve been easy, growing up human there. I shoved aside my linguasoft pop-ups, getting the gist. Hotspur’d abandoned ElfyLand, but was still respected by the geeks there.

“He’s in it to win it, Jimmy. Guy knows his stuff, been around since, like, Dodger, just never made it big.”

It was true. The other elf, with his glossy black-and-white Spinrad-X cyberarm, had been on the Seattle fringe as long as I had, maybe longer. He could hold his own in a scrap, I knew, not just in the digital reality they all soaked too long in. Hotspur and I’d met doing a little work for a local Neo-Anarchist cell. He was good people.

“Yeah, Gentry. I know him. And if I know him, he’s…”

“Free, yeah. Just wants to help.”

Good people, like I said.

“Perfect. Next?”

“That empty chair over there was where I was sitting.”

“I don’t need to know that.”

“I’m just bein’ thorough, boss.”

“Gentry…”

“Fine! Fine. Last up on our hit parade is Highball.”

“I like the cut of his jib.”

“I don’t know what those old-people words mean.”

“I like booze-centric street names, sue me. Just tell me about him.”

“He’s a Cereal Killer—that’s ‘cereal,’ with a c, like CHOCO-PUNCH CHOCO-PUFFS, not the other—”

“I got it, yeah.”

“Anyway, he’s a CK, but not too bad a guy for a ‘trix-ganger. He’s got the weakest ’deck in the group, but that’s like saying the guy with the Ares Predator’s got the cheapest pistol. He’s still trouble. Along with Voodoo Child, he’s gonna be our heavy hitter. The guy’s balls nasty in a digi-fight, even if he’s not the most subtle hacker this side of Slamm-0!, y’know?”

“No, no I do not.”

“I’m saying he’s good against IC and security deckers, in case we slip up and get loud.”

“And he’s how expensive?”

“Drumroll please…also free. I dared him.”

“That was it?”

“Well, I dared him and promised him some face-time with BG and Voodoo, yeah.”

I gave Gentry a sidelong glance.

“You got me a room full of hackers for free?”

“We prefer deckers, except maybe Hotspur, but, uh, yeah. I told you, everyone just wants the street cred. We’ll get what you’re after, leave a little VR graffiti, tag the place up, and be rock stars. So, uh, yeah. Free. Minus the pizza and the CHOCO-PUNCH stuff, and…”

“And a case of protein shakes?”

“That’d be wiz, Jimmy, yeah.”

“Done. I’ll hit the store. You lot finish getting ready.”

I dropped about two hundred nu on munchies, counting the pizzas they’d already picked up. I got them every kind of sugary, caffeinated, suicidal drek I could find. No booze—even for Highball—until after the hack was finished, but I picked some of that up, too, just to have it handy. A roomful of grown men and women, shadowrunners one and all, killers and stone-cold professionals, and I was getting ’em to spit in the eye of two of the city’s most crucial, powerful entities, all for some junk food.

Sometimes this world is weird as hell.

I sat on overwatch. It was tough. I didn’t piggyback this time, didn’t want to peek over Gentry’s shoulder and go along for the ride. He had enough to do, herding cats and coordinating a bunch of crazy bastards, right? I let him do it. I’d told him what we were looking for, and I’d told him why—after Sammy stuck his fist in my gut, I figured Gentry deserved the whole story—and I just had to trust him and his merry band of digital pirates to get the job done.

It was hard, to just sit there and watch them plug in. My neighborhood was good for it, both city services companies had hubs nearby, offices with server rooms and whatever else Gentry’d need. We were in the right part of town to get a solid connection, he’d said, which was why we’d agreed on my apartment in the first place.

In the end, they all just…did it. Sprawled out, got comfortable, leaned against a wall or something, and went away. It was eerie. I figured it was how other folks felt when I went astral—all the way, not just sneaking a peek—when they all dipped into full virtual reality, hot-sim, nothing between them and being brain-fried but their wits and their programs.

It was over faster than I thought it’d be.

They were gone two and a half minutes; that was it. Everyone lay there, everyone twitched a little, then they twitched a little more. Highball and Voodoo Child got bloody noses, then Bootleg Girl fell outta my chair and onto her ass. Hotspur kicked around a little, like someone having a bad dream, and then his namesake blades slid out of his arm, just to retract a second later. Then that was it. They all started blinking their eyes open, a couple groaned in pain, Voodoo cussed until she high-fived Highball, and they all started whooping.

I busted out the liquor.

Mission fucking accomplished.

CHAPTER 36

Things started moving faster. I called Hank Weazely and Pink, with Gentry listening in and coordinating file-swapping. I got data from each of them, shared information with each of them, tabulated what I had, sent the hackers back to the Armadillo with another hundred nuyen to buy themselves a round, and then I made one more phone call.

Caitlyn the Caboose was an Ork Underground girl through and through. She’d grown up in the dark down there, fixed what needed fixing, killed what needed killing. She’d been a big name about a decade back—that’s when we’d first crossed paths, me new-ish at this detective thing, her in her prime—and had been a drek-hot razorgirl for a while. Upgrades were expensive, though, and she’d seen that in the long run the streets were like the house in a casino. You keep playing long enough, they win.

Caitlyn had been busy these last few years, what with the campaign and all. They hadn’t put her in the spotlight or stuck a microphone in her face, she wasn’t the sort for that, even if she was cute in a “girl next door, but also a chromed-up pitfighter” sort of way. No, Caboose had been an organizer. A little Underground law, keeping rallies from getting out of hand, knocking heads, keeping the tusky young punks in line, not letting anything go too crazy. The people had spoken and the Ork Underground was a district all its own now; and there Caitlyn the Caboose was, protecting the rear, like always, trying to maintain something like order.

Especially since that two-timing Skip wasn’t answering my calls right now, Caitlyn was just what I’d needed to help put some puzzle pieces in order.

“’Boose? It’s Jimmy. Jimmy K. Jimmy Kincaid? The PI?”

Jeez, tough crowd. The last bit finally got her, though. Ten years was a long time to an ork. I tried not to let it sting.

“Hoi, Jimmy. What’s up?”

“I need some info, Cait. I’m tracking down some fuglies from the little-u underground, ghouls and their bitch-queen, a vampire. I want ’em gone, you want ’em gone. You gimme some solid paydata, I’m another step closer.”

“I’ll help if I can,” she said, and my heart sang. She was good people, Caboose.

“I’ll send you the map I’ve got right now. I just need you to let me know—be honest, Caboose, it’s important—let me know which of ’em are your people, and which aren’t.”

“Which what?”

I transferred the file, waited a tick to make sure the data was sending.

“That’s a map, a buddy put it together.” Hank was a buddy now, I guess. He had come through for me, the current map I had was version four, all told, updated and updated, time and again, as he kept the data coming.

“It’s been cross-referenced with some data we got, a good score from some secure utility servers. The spots on there, the tinted sections? That’s what I need you for, Caboose. Those zones mark likely unlawful access points.”

“You want me to rat my people out?”

“No, nothing like that. I want to know where the Underground might’ve spread to, yes. I want to know which power taps are theirs, yes. But I swear to you—Caitlyn, I swear it on my mother—I’m not telling anybody. It’s so I can know where these ghouls aren’t. I just need to narrow it down.”

It was already narrowed. I didn’t tell her that, just let Caitlyn chew on her bottom lip, tusks be damned, and make up her mind.

I’d tagged that asshole, Bones, to send him scurrying. I’d compiled data from the likely entry points we had—Gem’s warehouse that Tomizawa had told me about, some tunnels that connected to Doc Beaver’s place, old tunnels me ‘n’ Pinkerton had tagged two years ago, newer entrances he knew about throughout Downtown from leaning on his contacts, the sewer I’d kicked Sammy Bones into—and we’d put them all together. We had likely locations already, just based on the entrances and exits we knew they used.

We had some tunnels highlighted, some tunnels already flagged. What we needed was confirmation. What we needed was for the Ork Underground to be honest with me, to tell me which illegal utility drainages were theirs, so we could mark certain lengths of tunnel off the map.

“You promise, Jimmy? Not a word to your buddies in city hall, no cops?”

“You got my word, Caboose. Not a peep. This is just for a case. Just to kill some ghouls.”

“Jeeze…all right. Fine. Here.”

I got a little icon blinking to life, letting me know she’d sent back a file. A quick thought pulled it up, I rotated the 3D map, looked for her tags, or rather, looked for where her tags weren’t.

“You’re a lifesaver, ’Boose.”

“Not yet I ain’t.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m coming along, when you go after ’em. Gotta make sure this is on the up and up.”

That’d be her excuse with the Underground leadership, maybe.

“Sure,” I said, fighting a smile. She was good people. “Happy to have you, Caboose. More than.”

“Awright.” She tried to put on a grouchy ork face, failed miserably. “Don’t get all weepy on me, keeb. The more the merrier, that’s all. Call with a time and a place, yeah? Caboose, out!”

The call went dead. It gave me a hell of an idea. The more the merrier.

I had to cross-reference the latest version of the map with Hank Weazely, and my stomach was grumbling at me, too. The geeks’d cleaned out that pile of junk food I’d bought, hadn’t even left me any cold pizza, and they’d hit my fridge like a plague of locusts to boot.

“Hey, Darlene? Naw, naw. I’m not calling for Hank, or, well, him, too. Listen. That spaghetti still an option?”

“Tonight?”

A home-cooked meal would do me some good. After having all those hackers fill up my place, even a night around Hank and Darlene’s kids might not be too bad.

“Yeah, I gotta talk a little biz with him, too, though. But spaghetti sounds great. That’d be perfect.”

I smiled after I hung up, whistling a little tune as I headed out to my Ford. Things were gonna work out just fine.

CHAPTER 37

I should never have kicked their door open after seeing the blood on the knob, the scratches where claws had fumbled with simple, human opening of a door.

I should never have stepped inside, Colt up, wand ready, wrists crossed like I could still help someone.

I should never have looked around, my stupid fucking cybereyes and this terrible goddammed Sideways soaking it all in, locking it away, memorizing every detail.

I smelled smoke first, mercifully, but it didn’t last before the other odors hit.  Cheap garlic bread that had been left in the oven too long—the kitchen network’s stupid dog-brain cheerfully displayed that the timer had expired twenty minutes earlier—and filled the place with smoke and stink, granting a haze of unreality to all of it. My augmentations didn’t let the haze do the job, though, they still picked out every little detail. My Sideways tried to count spaghetti noodles scattered on the floor amidst pieces of housewife, tried to make sense of splash patterns, tried to tell me the story of a pot of boiling noodles being thrown at an assailant in a futile attempt at defending their home. My Transys called up forensic tutorials and told me the height of their assailant based on how the blood had hit the wall and ceiling, then the subroutines struggled for a moment because it couldn’t match the damage to any sort of knife blade.  

That’s because they hadn’t used knives to do their cutting.

A reluctant detective, a horrified investigator just this once, I picked out patterns in the scraps of cloth and meat that were all that was left of Darlene, there on the kitchen floor.  I put together a jigsaw puzzle where, half an hour earlier, a woman had stood cooking dinner for an expected houseguest.

I should never have called the Weazelys in the first place, involved them, dragged a couple of ordinary Puyallup citizens into the middle of the nightmare that’s my day-to-day.

I killed ’em.

It was me that opened them up, tore them to pieces, sliced big chunks out with Krieger-strain teeth and claws. It was me that had gutted Hank by the doorway as he’d gone to answer it, thinking it just was a guest coming over for spaghetti. It was me that’d broken Darlene’s neck and ripped her to pieces like a pack of fucking wolves. It was me that’d clawed down the Puyallup-flimsy apartment bedroom door, getting into the kids’ room, and then…

It was me, not Sammy Bones, that had used those claws to carve, then paint in blood, the big, glaring, obscene skull that leered from the living room wall.

This was my fault.

I try to forget the things I see, sometimes, in this job. I lock things away, put them into little data folders, and I never, ever open them back up until I fall asleep and can’t help myself. I wasn’t going to be able to do that here. I made the rest of that evening a blur as best I could. I stood around after I called Knight Errant, waited for Tillman to show up, and a couple other uniforms.

I answered their questions, shared my licenses, waved off their concern. I told them I had no idea who’d done it, told them I had no idea why, told them I’d just been coming over for dinner. Tillman’d run interference for me against the homicide dick who showed up, the kid’s suit still creased from a department store clothes hanger, and I think Tillie’d owed me 50 nuyen longer than this punk’d been out of college.

“These things take care of themselves,” Tillman told the kid, Detective Babyface, half his age, if that. One of the uniform’s arms were slipped around the detective’s shoulders, steering him away from me and keeping me from getting arrested. If he’d asked me one more stupid, fucking question, made me say one more word, I think I would’ve tried to strangle him.

When they said I could go, I went.

I sat in my Ford, and I beat holy hell out of the steering wheel for a minute, venting my rage, shouting at the top of my lungs.

Panting, I looked up at the Knight Errant lights still flashing, at the zipped-tight body bags full of children being wheeled out of the Weazelys’ apartment, and I kicked my Transys into gear.

“Gentry.” I didn’t have time to fuck around, so I didn’t even let him say hello. “Call those friends you mentioned. We’re killing these fuckers tomorrow.”

He paused for a second, gauging my mood, not cracking a joke, at least.

“They won’t come free, Kin—”

“I know. Their pay’ll come out of my share of the bounty money. Tomorrow. Just call ’em.”

I killed the line, called up the expenses tab I’d been running half the day. There was still a standard UCAS bounty on Krieger-strain Infected, 1,500 nuyen per confirmed kill. That was gonna  bankroll this whole thing. That, and my name. We were going in hot, everyone I could scrape together before going in.

My autonav turned the Ford around, nobly ignoring the abuse I’d heaped on my console, and drove me home. 

Sammy Bones and Nimbus and their buddies knew who I’d been talking to. They knew where I’d been going, who I’d been pushing for information, where I’d been looking for them.  Did they know how close I was to finding them? Did they know where to find my other friends, were they ballsy enough to go after them instead of a bickering married couple and their kids?  Would they hit the Bump & Sleep to go after Gem? Could Pink handle it if they came after him?  Just how fast was the clock ticking on me, now, how fast was the countdown coming, how long could I have waited, even if I wasn’t so pissed?

I had work to do. I had calls to make.

CHAPTER 38

My headware Avalon chimed 7:02—sunrise, according to three different online almanacs—but it was just to make sure I didn’t miss the turning of the cycle.  I hadn’t slept, couldn’t, didn’t have time to. I took another hit off my Long Haul puffer, the last dose that was even halfway safe according to the usage directions, and stared at the desk that represented a good chunk of my night’s work. The over-the-counter stimulant had done the job and kept me running all night, but even it couldn’t slow the clock and buy me more time; what I had was all I got.

Digital sticky notes covered it; the last-generation virtual desktop was buried in the scribblings of a lunatic with my handwriting, all abbreviations and hurried notes, the network of strings I’d tugged on to see who could show up and help; nicknames, street names, friends who didn’t answer, friends who couldn’t come, friends who’d changed names and faces since our last beer, friends who’d died, friends who were meeting me in a few hours. Favors called in, favors owed, promises made, payments offered, debts collected, debts forgiven. I’d been at it half the night, Transys humming, mental commands making calls, headware tallying finances and computing the probabilities that various contacts would agree, would decline, could be counted on to even speak to me in the first place, all of it calculated in the time it took them to pick up (or not). Then my own gut-check instincts took the raw data and the memories, churned them together, and every call turned into me talking my fool head off to try and pitch this crazy, dangerous job like I was selling something.

It had been a long night.

My throat was raw from the phone calls, threats, promises, and worse, and I gave my library door a dirty look as I crossed the apartment to grope in the refrigerator for a beer. I grabbed two and headed back to the desk for a weapons check.

Digital sticky notes went thick-pixelled around the edges as I set the cold, wet, bottles atop them, then again as my Colt was dragged from my waist and settled atop it, a third time as I sprawled out the little zip-open cleaning kit I kept in a desk drawer. My hands needed to stay busy, my optics wanted details to process, my Sideways wanted small parts to track and imperfections to notice. The 2061 was gorgeous on the inside, the only scuffs and scrapes were external, from a decade and more of rough living and hard use. It was fine. I took my time while I cleaned it, anyway, enjoying the ritual, using the smell of the oil and the utilitarian lines of the seminal semi-auto to focus and center myself.

My knife also didn’t need a cleaning, I hadn’t cut anyone with it since shanking de Vries after the Ariana incident. As a weapon focus and a mono-knife besides, it’s not like it needed sharpening, anyway. My wand was fine, but it always was. The power wasn’t in the form it carried, the power was in the function.

My last weapon was a new addition, a specific one, added based on something de Vries had reminded me of, something a quick database search had confirmed. Vampires hate things that live and grow. Prolonged exposure to living, natural things hurt them, could even kill them. Everyone knew about the sun. I’d forgotten about wood. I’d shopped around and found myself a nice little bat, what truckers called a tire-thumper. Legally, they used it to check the sound on their tires, whacking ’em just so to listen for air pressure. Realistically? It was a skull-cracker, just shortened for balance, sawed-off to fit under the seat of a semi or to be used more easily indoors. Real wood. Old stuff. Solid, sturdy, and made of a living thing.

I hoped Nimbus’d like it as much as I did.

For extra armor, I bulked up my usual suit with an old Lone Star tac-vest. The plates needed replacing every so often—I got shot at more than most—but the basic vest was fine as ever, and lined with some impact-resistant gelatin packs. It was a dark thing, made to be worn by SWAT or my old Fast Response Team crew, but I wasn’t interested in fashion today, I was interested in protection. I knew what I was up against, and I knew Ari and her protective spells were a million miles and more away. It felt heavy and ugly and mean when I strapped it on, and I didn’t much mind.

I was, I decided as I pulled on my lucky gloves and cracked my knuckles, in something of a heavy, ugly, and mean mood myself. My Ford snarled a little more than normal, my foot a little more eager on the pedal as I drove through the Sprawl to get today’s business over with.

We were staging late-morning at a spot Weazely had picked and my headware map had okayed. The building was gone and forgotten—mapsofts tagged it as a once-upon-a-time department store—but the parking lot suited us just fine. They showed up singly and in pairs, I was the first one there. We huddled in the shade, a motley assortment of criminals, ex-cops, or both as the sun rose higher in the sky.

Pink showed up first, wearing a bulkier armored jacket than normal and toting a worn-looking shotgun. The dwarf was as good as his word, but I hadn’t been worried on that front. A small golden cross hung from a slender chain, outside his shirt for once, and I guess I couldn’t blame him. He had a bulky pair of goggles propped high on his forehead, and I remembered he’d never indulged in cyberoptics.

Sterling was next, a bounty hunter dragged in by the credstick. He’d hunted his fair share of monsters and fought his share of uphill battles. He was as Italian as they come, all swept-back black hair and high cheekbones, maybe the last Italian anywhere near Puyallup that wasn’t in bed with the Gianellis. Unlike Pinkerton, his eyes flashed chrome in the morning sun, a replacement set as much as an upgrade, judging by the scarring around his eyes; I’d heard rumors of it having been acid, maybe a naga, maybe fire. I didn’t care what had done it, ghouls were all I was worried about today.

Caboose’s Harley announced her, maybe the loudest arrival of the day, and I was glad to have her. She was a tough-as-nails Underground vet, cut from the same cloth as another gal I knew, but about five times as friendly. She’d brought a friend, another tusker, this one called himself Billy Bricks, but to be honest I was pretty sure Caboose’d beat him in an arm-wrestle. He looked quick, though, maybe quicker’n her, and both of them had nice, big rifles. That’d be handy. 

Hardpoint and another one of Gentry’s pals rolled up not long after, climbing out of a big GMC stepvan, standard shadowrunner fare for those that could afford it. The sturdy dwarven rigger gave Pinkerton a friendly nod, and the two got to chatting. Judging from the work he did with literally garbage over at Black’s, I was eager to see the firepower he could produce using actual combat drones.  The ork that got out behind him had custom-tweaked arms and a rep I recognized. Sledge, they called him in the Underground. He and his Yamaha Raiden assault rifle’d be handy today, maybe as much as Hardpoint and his three gun-drones. Maybe. Bricks and Caboose seemed to know him, too, and Sledge bristled a little when he saw them. Billy Bricks bristled right back, but Caboose was smart enough to say something to the kid and just glare from the other side of my ragged little crew instead of letting some orkish brawl break out. Underground politics, I figured, but what mattered was they were there, and they’d brought big guns.

Blue showed up while the orks still had everyone ready to take bets or duck out of the way, her custom-colored dermal sheathing making her street handle pretty much a given. My optical color filters went ahead and let her show off that azure skin of hers, and I nodded at her. She’d been a cop, like me and Pinkerton. She wasn’t any more, like me and Pinkerton. She’d had a string of bad luck, like me and Pinkerton. Unlike either of us, she was cybered all to hell and back, deltaware to the gills, a top-end street samurai that’d give Hard Exit a run for her money. It was nice of her to take a break from her Draco Foundation work to help me out, but she’d taken prob’ly longer than anyone else to talk into showing, had taken me more work and more reminders of old favors.

Daisy, meanwhile, had been easy as pie to sign on. She was a troll, as broad in the shoulders as almost anyone, but with a smile nearly as sweet as Ariana’s…when she wasn’t mad. Daisy was a Bear shaman. Like everyone who followed that mentor, she was a sworn healer, but also something of a berserker. She took her magic more to heart, took her obligations more seriously, than me and my asshole Hermetic Order pals. I’d said ghouls, she’d said yes, and all I’d had to promise was dinner in return. She was a simple girl, Daisy. She had a way with the mojo, and she used that magic to make the world better, to heal people as much as hurt. Good people, horns, warts, and all.  

More showed up, a steady trickle that made me almost proud of how many friends I had, except when I remembered why I’d called ’em here and how I’d met half of ’em. Two were guys I’d covered for when they’d broken regs during Lone Star Fast Response training all those years ago—they hadn’t made it onto my team, or they’d be dead and buried—three were two-bit hoods and gangers I’d put away at one time or another, but had cut a break to since. One was a salty old bastard who’d worked a sniper’s tower when my old man had been in charge at McMillin, back in the day. Once upon a time Dad had saved his life, holding in his guts after an inmate’s shiv messed him up real good, in a pretty rare—for McMillin—episode of ugliness; I’d called him to see if he knew anyone who might want to help, but Ricks had insisted on coming up himself. I’d eventually talked him into just watching our cars and bikes and stuff. He carried a big bolt-action Ruger 100, though, and for a second I wished I’d decided to bring that kind of firepower along, even knowing how much the old man would risk in the dark and the tunnels.

I was a bastard, sometimes.

I greeted them one by one, exchanged nods at the very least. I handed out a few credsticks to the ones that wanted up-front payment instead of gambling on a big kill count, shook some hands, bumped a few fists. I’d been busy last night, busier than just the phone calls, and I’d gathered party favors. Everyone got a chem-green glow stick or two, along with a slap patch of the most potent antivirals I could afford. Everyone got an introduction, some more brief than others.

It was almost time to go to work. Guess I’d better rally the troops.

“All right, folks. Circle up. Let’s go back over the plan. First up? Your ugly faces.”

Model-gorgeous Blue shot me a wink. So did Daisy, and I winked back at her.

“In addition to those nasty pieces of work,” I nodded to Hardpoint’s drones, big models bristling with guns, solar panel charging up their batteries before their rotors would carry them into the dark as the vanguard, “Hardpoint’s got some camera models he’ll be using when we’re ready to go inside. Anyone don’t want their mug on vid, wear one of those masks I brought. Anyone wants a copy of the show for a resumé or whatever, mail me. Anyone wants a cut of the straight, legal bounty, and wants it on record, make sure you mail me the SIN you want it under.”

I sighed. Here came the ugly part.

“Once we go in, guns up. If it ain’t one of us—or one of the prettyboys or dainty ladies who ain’t here just yet—you shoot it down. Period. Fucking period. I know folks, and we’ve checked and double checked.” I nodded to Caboose, who nodded back, “Ain’t no Ork Underground folks holed up near here. Nothing good lives in these tunnels, people. Nicest thing we’ll meet in there might be a devil rat or two.”

“Worst thing? Likeliest thing? Ghouls. You mooks already know that, though. That’s why so many of your buddies ain’t here to help. Ghouls’re nasty, I know that. You know that. So guns up, like I said. Be generous with the ammo. Shoot first. Sharp and fast. It moves, you shoot it until it stops. Don’t let ’em get close if you can help it. If they do, let the big bastards take point. Ghouls can’t bite chrome.”

Sledge grunted at that.

Here came the really ugly part.

“If you do get bit, and somewhere that can bleed? You kill the biter, before you do anything else. Kill it good. Don’t panic. Just shoot it, drop it, then step back. Someone else’ll step up. You use the slap patch, then you get to me, or you get to Daisy, or one of the other spellcasters.”

Daisy, or one of the other spellcasters, I was sure they were all thinking. I couldn’t blame them.

“We got shit that’ll help. Stuff we can do. Just keep cool, kill the bastard that bit you, and get to us. In addition to that—which, by the way, is a job we don’t want to do, so don’t get bit, right?—we’ll mostly be holding up walls. Barriers. I don’t know how much you mooks know or care about the mojo, but trust me when I say ghouls’ll be slowed down by them, and bullets won’t. So it’s simple. We wall ’em away from us, you shoot ’em down, no one gets bit. Easy as pie.”

They knew I was telling the truth, even while they knew I was lying.

I glanced sideways as I heard a high-pitched whine, somewhere between an electric engine and a low-flying jet. 

“Speakin’ of mojo…” I trailed off and let the crew take a look.

Elves.

Not like me, mind, and not even like cybered-up Blue. Ancients. Proper elves, riding tricked-out bikes. They were the elves folks expected to see when they thought of the metaspecies, the ones folks expected to be magical even when they weren’t. The prima donnas had come late, of course, because they liked to make an entrance, but they were here.

Rook was in the lead, and along with Bushido Blitz, they had some friends. A pack of a half-dozen, all green hair, black leather, and chrome bikes, rode in an escort pattern around a top-end Suburban SUV, itself all wrapped in augmented reality advertisements.

The Ancients had shown up with our guest of honor today, the trid-star himself. The other one who had to make an entrance. My Sideways and my Transys picked up his circling camera drones, and I wondered if we’d even need Hardpoint’s recordings, too.

Chase, Mr. Errant Knight himself, climbed down from the driver’s seat of his blinged-out Suburban and made a big show of waving to the crowd. He was tall and rangy, even for an elf, and all decked out like he’d wandered off the set of a Western flick; which, I guess, he kinda had. Everyone with a trid knew the bounty hunter was Ares-certified and Ares-branded, playing up whatever all-American garbage Ares was selling at the moment. Head to toe, he was in logo-blazoned gear, from his naga-leather boots to his big Stetson cowboy hat—white, natch, the only sensible color for a trip into the sewers—from his designer denim to his classic-style synthleather duster, and from his custom two-gun rig to the pair of Ares Carnivore wheelguns holstered there. He made a living chasing bad guys while camera drones chased him. It was all live, all lethal, and supposedly all legit. A trid-star bounty hunter, a known adept with a penchant for gunslinging, and a straight-up Ares icon, right here, in the flesh. Ghouls had a bounty. Trace and Skip had talked him into filming here.

“Well all right, all right, all right,” he drawled with his CAS twang, dazzling the little crowd of street muscle with a superstar smile, “Let’s get this hunt goin’, huh?”

Blue giggled like she was maybe a third her age, looked away and blushed almost indigo. Daisy also blushed, smiled, and forgot about her size and horns for a second. Hardpoint grinned clean through his shaggy beard. Caboose—swear to Jesus, Buddha, and Zeus—Caboose batted her eyelashes like a schoolgirl. Billy Bricks looked like he was about to ask for an autograph, and maybe that’s how the other ork had gotten him to come along for the day.

Me? I soaked up his details, like it or not, but realtime my eyes slid right past him. Climbing out the other side of his truck came what passed for my two best friends on this plane of existence. Skip and Trace. Finally. When I’d managed to get them on the phone, they were the only ones here I hadn’t had to beg, borrow, bribe, or cash in a favor from. They’d just come. They’d sold Chase on it themselves, dragged him here with the promise of the bounty and some dramatic action, and that’d been enough. Would’ve come even if he’d said no, I bet. Once they heard, once they understood, they’d just come. I felt like I had a shot, when I saw them.

I was glad to have ’em both, valuable additions to the team, not just friends. After burning out at U-Dub, Trace had hit the shadows, and was a good, reliable decker, for all her insistence that she wasn’t really a hacker. She wasn’t as sharp as FastJack or whoever-the-fuck, no, but she was good. Good enough she’d been at it, picking at the heart of the industry without ever really diving in all the way, for this long. That meant something.

Her girlfriend, I’ve mentioned, was Skip. Skip and I kind of grated on each other, almost as much as we both loved Trace. She had a history with elven men, I knew through the grapevine, and apparently one—some hombre named Angel—had given her some trigger issues with addiction to boot. I rubbed her the wrong way just by breathing, I think. We’d gotten better over the years, though, me an’ Skip. We respected each other, even if we still got on one another’s nerves.

Skip was a powerful orkish gal, like Caboose, but bigger. Toting more combat augs, more street cred, more attitude. Caboose could turn girly sometimes, could play nice, could be level-headed. Skip, though? If Skip knew how to smile—really smile, out of shared happiness with someone near her, not flashing her tusks in a dominance display—she kept it a secret between her and Trace. She had muscle implants and other curves augmented, but, like Trace, had never called herself a straight-up street samurai.

She was content to be a razorgirl, a Barrens-brat who stayed semi-legit, and the two of them were some of the most rock-solid bounty hunters in the Sprawl. They weren’t quite shadowrunners, but they were close enough for today’s work. Trace had her Ingram Smartgun, Skip’d brought along a pink-accented Ares Alpha, a recent upgrade. Those guns’d be handy down there.

Ariana was like a little sister to them, and knowing I needed some help to help her, here they were. Big shot bounty hunting trid-show contract or not, once I’d manned up enough to tell them what was going on, they’d shown up.

I did have some friends left in this world. All from the Barrens, or the orkish city underneath it. No one born and raised in uptown. No one from the Hermetic Order of the Auric Aurora, or who still worked for Lone Star, or the university. Even Martin de Vries had apologized his way out of it, telling me he preferred to work at night, so I didn’t have some big time world-famous vampire hunter, no. I had the half-and-halfs. The folks with—at best—one foot in the light, one in the shadows. I had the ones that fell through the city’s cracks. I had the ones that needed to get paid, or to get forgiven, or needed to get a chit called in.

But, hell. I had ’em.

“You all know the drill.” I drew my Colt, press-checked it to make sure I had a round in the chamber, then nodded at the tunnel entrance.

“Let’s get this over with.”

CHAPTER 39

The drones went in first. All three of Hardpoint’s, with their underslung assault rifles, and a pair of Chase’s, commanded by who-knows-who from who-knows-where, along for the ride and to set up good camera angles. After the drones came the gangers, mostly. Once a few Ancients took point, the denim-clad wannabes and second-rates had to follow suit. Their reps were on the line, and the cooler heads—older, one and all—were content to let the punks strut around up front.

Billy Bricks had wanted to go then, too, but Caboose had held him back. Those two and Sledge, content to focus on ghouls for the moment instead of whatever betusked political squabble they were otherwise distracted by, were our second wave. Pinkerton was with them, and Granger and Castaigne, the Fast Response washouts who Lone Star’d screwed over almost as hard as me. They’d hold, that lot. Pink had bulked up his sturdy jacket with some old riot gear, and Billy Bricks had on what maybe looked like hockey pads. It beat nothing, and maybe even it’d beat a ghoul tooth or two.

Rook and Daisy were next, her maybe three times his mass, sharing notes. She was a troll, he was elven as all hell. She was a healer, he was a something else. The pair were still chatting spell formula and barrier theory all the way up until they ducked into the dark. Hell, maybe they’d hit it off. Maybe that’s where orks came from, what do I know?

Bushido Blitz and Chase, of all people, were shadowing the spellcasters. Chase was a glory hound, but smart enough to not want to take point. He’d hang back, be middle of the pack, and have plenty of space to twirl his guns and pose for the cameras. Blitz was worried about keeping Rook safe, but knew his katana wasn’t exactly an ideal choice for the day. He was good, and he was fast, but no one rushed in to go blade-to-fangs against ghouls. Blitz carried a slivergun for backup, and maybe it was that Ares Viper that had gotten Chase to chat him up as they headed in.

Blue and Sterling rounded out the pack, sticking close enough to the magicians, just like the magicians were going to be close enough to the main gunline. As far as I knew, they didn’t have anything in common but me. Neither one seemed bothered by it, though. They went over a few basic tactics, double-checked street names for the folks they were about to go into a fight alongside, high-fived when they realized they were both Savalette Guardian and HK 227 fans that carried compatible magazines. I guess they had professionalism in common, too, or at least the same love for price tags.

I was last in, and that hurt. Skip and Trace, the duo that had declared themselves my bodyguards, hung back with me. Skip had the layout of the place on her ’deck and was running on-site Matrix overwatch for the lot of us, handling a low-grade tacnet that coordinated everyone’s commlinks, headware or otherwise, to keep us in touch. Trace snuck Skip a kiss on the cheek before the two of them waded into the dark, I just caught it out of the corner of my eye. It was a nice profile shot, the two of them silhouetted against the still-early sun.

I prayed—just on the off chance anyone but that asshole Adversary might still listen to me—that those two, at least, God, Odin, St. George, the Virgin Mary, fucking someone, please, at least those two would make it back out. My plan had to work. There couldn’t be too many ghouls. I’ve got to be able to handle the bitch, Nimbus.

Don’t let my whole team die in the dark to these bastards, not a second time. At least those two gotta see the sun again, someone upstairs please listen.

I didn’t feel an answer. Instead, I just felt the hole where Ariana used to be. I ignored it.

Everyone had something that let ’em see in the dark. Everyone wore a light, at least a glow-stick or two. The Ancients had taken most of the spares, all in love with the things because they were green as all get-out, and probably let them see their own reflections better. So the whole lot of us, from our pointman-punks to Skip and Trace in the rear, glowed acid green as we entered the stink and the darkness of those half-abandoned sewer tunnels.

I’d shared spell formulas with Daisy and Rook, once they’d agreed to the job early the night before. I’d sweetened the pot with the detection spell similar to what Ari’d been practicing the night she was taken from me. Spell formulas weren’t cheap, so they’d snatched it up. This one detected Krieger strain HMHVV. Ghouls, not vampires. They had the right mojo to spot the Infected. We had magical radar, basically, that’d hopefully keep us from getting caught with our pants down.

My headware told me exactly how long we were walking into deepening muck before the monsters came at us—six minutes, thirteen seconds, thanks for asking—but it felt like we were down there for hours, and had wandered miles underground.

It didn’t take long for the fight to start. This was a standard in-and-out for the ghouls, a favorite tunnel of theirs. We knew we were in a high traffic zone, knew they’d be on us eventually. Rook, Daisy, and I all had our eyes open, it hadn’t been a ward or anything that got us spotted. 

The ghouls just…knew. Heard us. Smelled us. Felt a little grumble in their tummies like a bunch of steaks had walked in, I don’t know. But they were on us, and fast. We also knew, to our credit, and weren’t caught napping. Rook spoke up, beating Daisy to the punch, and their quick warning was all we got before the shooting started.

The drones opened up, Hardpoint sent the rest of us a quick text alarm and then things really picked up speed. My band of pointmen, whooping, war-painted, toting shotguns and machine pistols and more ammo than common sense, tripped all over each other to get to the front, firing as they went. The cops and shadowrunners in the second wave played it cooler, and Daisy just edged out Rook in putting up the first mana barrier spell.

It worked just like I’d explained topside. They were half-real mystical walls that stopped spells and living creatures, astral constructs, that sort of thing—and critters, like ghouls, that were half-astral and half-alive—but bullets and grenades flew through just fine. We stood and shot, they died trying to reach us.

Oh, the ghouls tore them down, make no mistake. They raked at those barriers with their claws, shoulder-bashed them, kicked them, ran headlong into them like animals until they broke or the ghostly walls did. Rook and Daisy stayed busy renewing the barriers, slowing the onslaught, buying all of us time—more time than we wanted to need—to line up our sights and, in picking good shots, to get a good look at the ghouls we were fighting. Some were naked except for the filth and long-dried blood, some were in rags, most were in clothes that wouldn’t be out of place anywhere topside in the Barrens. 

Most were downright feral, but some were smart enough and metahuman enough to still be using guns. The firefight wasn’t as one-sided as we’d hoped; I saw Caboose tumble down with a slug in her shoulder, saw Bushido Blitz spin away from a grazing hit almost quick enough to dodge it, saw sparks fly as bullets bounced off Sledge’s chromed-up arms before the burly ork returned fire with a snarl. Daisy stopped her wall-flinging to pour new life into Pink after he went down to a burst of autofire from somewhere in the dark, then got back into the casting, her shamanic mask making her look shaggy and Bear-burly. It didn’t take long for the gunfight to turn into ’runners and gangers taking cover and returning fire, not just focusing on the claws and fangs of the ferals.

I saw it all, like always. My optical implant color filters followed my mood, and turned the whole thing into a sickly green mess, half-lit by the glowing chem-sticks we packed, half by the mad strobing of gunfire. My Avalon tagged the weapons, marked targets as dangerous or dead, blinked dutifully as friendlies changed from still-active blue on my heads-up display to fading blue-grays, swarmed by packs of blinking red hostiles.

I saw an Ancient get torn apart, limb-by-limb, during a mad surge between mana barriers. He was ripped apart by feral claws and opposable thumbs, taken to pieces in less time than it took him to fumble for an Uzi reload. I fired and fired, dumped a Colt magazine into the mass of lanky limbs and red teeth around him, just to make myself feel better. I saw Bushido Blitz swept right to left across my field of vision, a blur of steel and blood that held the line between wavering barrier spells, moving flicker-quick and leaving dismembered ferals in his wake. Pink cursed and dropped his pump-action into the muck to go for his trusty Predator one-handed, his left arm hanging useless by his side, leaning against Daisy while she casually held him up with one big arm. Rook stood, dark and proud with his spellcaster’s illusory mask deep in place, discarding his green-glowing chem-light to cloak himself in dark feathers and whispered promises, erecting wall after wall between himself and an ugly death. Chase stopped smirking and showing off, started picking his shots more slowly, more accurately, aiming to cripple and maim, to slow down the tide by taking out knees, to buy time for the gunmen around him. Every round he fired either took a ghoul right in the ugly face for a kill, or blew out a knee to keep the Infected away from his teammates.  Trace’s blocky little submachinegun barked and chattered and ran hot just like everyone else’s, Skip’s bigger automatic roared and carved swathes out of the ghouls, circling like wolves.  The two of them fought like they lived, side to side, doing their best work the closer they were to each other.

In the muzzle flashes and eerie green lights, I saw the skull-tattooed grin of Sammy Bones flash at me from the middle of the ghoul pack. Nimbus’ right hand ghoul, meat between his teeth, crest of implanted spikes and all. I wanted that bastard, but he wasn’t my job. Blue would get him, or Sterling, or Sledge. I had people for that. I had my own job to do.

Billy Bricks falling beneath a pack of ghouls—three, four, more?—was the last thing I saw before I turned my back on all of them and ran down my assigned side tunnel. They had enough guns there, and better ones than me. They had enough spellcasters there, each one easily twice my power. They had cooler heads than mine there, Skip coordinating over the tacnet, Trace firing just the right bullet at just the right time, again and again. I had somewhere else to be, I had to trust my team. They’d gotten me to the cross-section of tunnels I’d needed to reach in this Infected warren, and they were going to hold that intersection behind me.  I had to go after their boss alone, or Adversary’d probably never let me live it down.  I cast Reynolds’ vampire detection spell, got a hit, and let the detection mojo pull me like a diving rod.

I kept my Colt up as I ran, leading with it around each corner, and let the gunfire recede behind me. I was close. Nimbus was close. I could feel her in my bones, a little itch at the old scar on my neck.

It wasn’t the heads-up display that told me I was in her private chamber, it wasn’t the map we’d worked so hard on, the projections we’d overlaid onto it. It was the way the door slid shut behind me and a fog—that damned impossible vampire fog, them turning to fucking mist—swirled around me. I’d been there before. I’d almost been right here before. It was my nightmares coming to life, but me with a worse gun, with weaker armor, with less power, without Ariana. It was my lowest point, but worse, happening all over again.

And I think Nimbus could taste that.

She coalesced in front of me, and I tried my luck with a double tap. My aim was dead on, but she didn’t care; the rounds tore ragged bloody holes in her chalk-white flesh, and she laughed around the blood that sprayed up.

“Oh, you,” she said, like I was a kid that had teasingly pulled a pigtail. She lurched at me, impossibly quick, and shoulder-checked me to one side. Then she vanished as I spun and scanned the shadows for her. I knew she was healing. Every second I wasn’t hitting her, she was healing.

“Boys and their toys.” She laughed at me and my gun from somewhere off to the side, but even as I turned to line up the sights she was gone. She was so fast. Faster than I remembered, or maybe I was just slower.

“Your gun won’t work, silly. You tried that before, don’t you remember?”

She punched me, or shoved me, or just tapped me on the chest, and suddenly I was flying backwards, smacking into a concrete wall with the expected result. My wind left me, but I sucked it back as I clambered to my feet, Colt up in my right hand.

Nimbus came at me again, a blur of alabaster skin, slash-cut multi-colored hair, and breath like rotten meat. I had the satisfaction of putting another pair of slugs into her torso before a backhand knocked my Colt away and damn near broke my wrist.

She stopped to pose and hiss, baring her fangs like an animal instead of pressing the attack. I punched her in the face, my best big right haymaker. The densi-plast knuckles of my glove added weight and striking surface, and she looked surprised. She’d gotten by on fury and fear for too long, she probably hadn’t had anyone just sock her in her stupid face.

Nimbus blinked at me, and I brought up the tire-thumper. A sawed-off bat, old enough to be made of real wood, Louisville Slugger etched on the side.

She blinked, snarled, bared her fangs and tried to scare me off.

“Go fuck yourself.” I gave her a solid overhand bash that sent blood spraying. I turned the recovery into a proper two-handed grip, wound up, and as I brought it around it took out one of her front fangs.

Good.

She hit me for real, then, and I think I blacked out for a second after I slammed into the wall that time. Maybe I should’ve brought a helmet. I tried to keep a grip on the bat, but it was tough, my body wasn’t responding quite right, my Corpsman was trying to tell me exactly what was wrong, but I didn’t have a chance to read it.

She lunged across the room to hook her claws into the front of my tac-vest and effortlessly lifted me, shook me, slammed me against the wall. The blood was still slick on her chin, the wound was still ugly and raw, her snarling face was lopsided and off-center missing one fang. She looked pretty stupid, but she looked pretty mad, too.

Mass didn’t matter, she had her stolen-life-force strength turned way up. When she smacked me against the wall for the eighth or tenth time, when the sawed-off little bat clattered to the ground from the shaking, when she was pretty sure she had me well in hand, she turned on the crazy.

“I re-mem-ber you,” she said, going all sing-song, all childish, all stomach-churningly almost like Ariana’s mercurial youth.

She tossed me again, just a twist of her hips and a fling of her arms sending me sailing into the ceiling, bashing against it, hard, then tumbling into the muck again.

“I remember the taste of your power. Your life’s blood. Your fear and your anger, your silly little toy soldiers.”

She ran over and soccer-kicked me, vest or not I felt my ribs flex, and I flew to the inner sanctum’s far wall, coughing. Nimbus plucked me out of the slime again, held me up one handed, grabbing me by the vest and shaking me awake so she could keep taunting.

“That was a long time ago, huh?”

Her face was close to mine, so close the smell of her breath turned my stomach. I thought about puking on her to piss her off, choked it down instead, swallowing to add the bile to the cold, hard pit of meanness Adversary liked in the bottom of my stomach.

“You’ve aged so appallingly, Mr. Kincaid,” she said, tsk-tsking and shaking her head. “The years and your negative attitude, little mortal, have not been kind.”

After she pinned me to the wall, Nimbus giggled, every bit as pants-on-the-head crazy as in my nightmares. Maybe the voices had told her a joke. Loopy broad.

One of her hands slithered up to run through my hair, then to tangle fingers in it, then to effortlessly jerk my head back, exposing my neck. I thought about all the friends I had fighting ghouls a couple dozen yards away. I thought about Ariana, on the other side of reality. I thought about how busy I’d been last night. I wished I had a friend a little closer.

“They said not to kill you, all those years ago,” she leaned in, nuzzling at my neck before she murdered me.

“They didn’t say anything at all about me not being allowed to kill you now.”

“It ain’t up to ‘them,’ lady.” I didn’t care what voices she heard. I felt her breath—not hot, just there—on my neck, so close I knew I should be worried. I wasn’t. My wish’d come true. I had a friend a little closer.

“And it ain’t up to you.”

She strained to plant her lips firmly and bite down, but her own hair—sloppily dyed blue and green, maybe an ‘artsy’ job by Sammy Bones himself—was snarled tight, yanked back, keeping even her preternaturally strong neck muscles from finishing the job. Her jaw closed down just short of my throat, snapping like a frustrated alligator who couldn’t quite reach, and I grinned.

“Get her. All o’ you.”

She didn’t know it, but she was as good as dead.

Joining the first spirit—a plucky, airy sylph, something right out of Tír na nOg, blue-white faerie wings flapping furiously as it pulled on Nimbus’ stupid hair—came a sturdy little gnome, an earth elemental drawn from the same plane as Ariana. Crafted from a uniquely Puyallupian mixture of sewage and concrete, but colored in the perpetual ash from topside, he clamped his arms around one of Nimbus’ legs, incidentally ripping her already tattered dance-club leggings. Then came a wicked salamander, fiery-bright, slithering around her other leg, burning as it climbed up her, wrapped in fire from head to tail.

“What…are you? Are you kidding with this?” She flicked me away, twisted, easily kicked her leg free of the salamander only for a solid-but-short stone gargoyle to grab onto her instead, and weigh her down.

“Hey, get off me, you little…”

None of them could’ve held her alone. I wasn’t spellcaster enough for that, not by half. No, none of them was an Ariana, not even close. But there were a lot of them. Against one or two, she’d be fine and I’d be dead. But against four, six, eight? I had her. Checkmate. I’d brought all sorts of friends to this party. Some for speed, some for strength, some for stinging elemental bolts. As many as I could conjure up and control, as many of them as my will could manage to bind. I’d summoned more spirits riding that dose of Long Haul last night than I had in the last year. I’d bound more than I had in the last decade. Ariana wasn’t here to see the binding rites. Ariana wasn’t here to be my conscience.

Spirits of earth, of fire, of air, water, and metahumanity—one was a slithering, groping DNA helix, believe it or not—all grappled with her, all at once, called up from every plane I knew how to reach, taken form from every belief system I knew how to lie to and pretend to believe in.

“Get these things off me!”

She kicked the gnome away but a grabby little Samedi-spirit in a dapper top hat clung to her face, cackling. She swatted it off just in time for a curvy, naked little undine-girl, made of sewer water, to blast her with a spray of disreputable liquid. A smoldering, pint-sized djinn and a fierce warrior-angel with a sword of lightning attacked her low and high, then the rocky gnome got a good grip again, weighing her down as the DNA-snake, a spirit of metahumanity, bit at her like a striking serpent. Some grappled, some clawed and bit, some burned her, a few threw weak little spells, all of them swarming, distracting, stinging, holding her still.

I slumped against the wall, tired.

Yeah, I’d had a busy night. My throat wasn’t raw just from nonstop commlink calls. I’d been chanting half the damned night, forcing every minor spirit in the book to drag its sorry ass to this plane, then to wait on the Astral for my command to materialize. I hadn’t just promised favors and bounties and nuyen to metahumans, I’d gone through half my stores of reagents to summon and bind myself a small army.

She hissed and clawed, kicked and shook, raked at them with her broken black-painted nails, shattered her teeth on a gargoyle’s stony hide. I watched, worked a crick out of my neck, and tried not to laugh as she struggled. She’d spent too long in the dark and the shit, gone half-feral. She was just a trapped animal now, trying to use raw strength when a sanguisa europa, a vampire, had so many other tricks. Perfect. Let her.

When I was sure that she was sure they had her, I rose to my Mentor’s bait, and gave her a friendly suggestion.

“You know, spirits are vulnerable to spells,” I offered up conversationally as I reached into my pants pocket to pull out my crumpled pack of Targets. She snarled at me like a mad cat until the cheeky little undine squirted something into her open mouth and left her sputtering. I touched the tip of my smoke to the flaming djinn dancing on her head and lit up my cigarette while her hair burned.

“I know all you vampires can cast. You were too stupid to think to, but here. See if you can do it. I bet you can’t.”

That reminded her, sure enough. She glared at the undine and called up her predatory magic, hurled a bolt of raw fire from her red-glowing eyes, trying to burn the small spirit to nothing. That was what I wanted. That was what Adversary wanted for me. To test myself against her. To prove I could do it, with or without his help.

“Ag.”

I batted the spell out of the air like a goalie blocking a shot. A faint wisp of smoke, less than was coming from my Target, was all that was left of her attack. God, it was easy. Maybe not as easy as stopping Uranus had been, but more satisfying.

The undine squirted her again, the DNA-chain struck, the gnome grappled, all while Nimbus sputtered and howled at me and called up a more potent spell.

Adversary laughed and I laughed with him; technique counted, here, experience and talent, not raw power given by some pathetic disease. She was out of practice. She was rusty. For all her power, all the stolen life she had coursing through her, for what should have been decades of practice as a combat magician…she was like nothing to me. I had tricks she didn’t. I’d honed techniques she’d never even stumbled across. My shielding was flawless.

“Ag.”

I swatted her second spell aside while the central chamber filled with the smell of her burning flesh, my spirits crawling over her, pinching and biting and razing her to the ground. She wasn’t going to hurt them and she wasn’t going to hurt me.

She writhed and shrieked and cast again, all predator, all feral, as animalistic in that moment as her ghoulish pets, as lost to Wolf or some perverted shadow of him as any toxic shaman the world had ever seen. A terrible spell filled her head and heart, a mighty fireball, the sort of impossible casting that would leave a ruined pile of ash behind instead of any recognizable corpse, a spell of murderous mass destruction, something to wreck a building in a single casting.

“Ag.” I almost laughed it out, that time.

My shielding held, again. My capacity to counterspell did the trick, hit the sweet spot, blocked the goal. I’d let her snarl and chant and call up her tac-nuke blast, and then I’d snuffed it out because I could. Because Adversary wanted me to—no, because I wanted to. I let the strain of the overcasting send blood to redden her eyes, let her harness the power before I cut the strings to it, let her feel the pain of her failure, of the damage she caused herself for no gain, of the humiliation of me nipping her casting in the bud.

“You. Stupid. Monster.” I blew smoke in her face, relishing the taste of her failure.

I dragged on the cigarette, then flicked it away to bounce off her corpse-pale face, then sputter out in the wetness on the floor. The gunfire had stopped, back behind me. I didn’t spare my headware a glance, but I knew they were alive. I knew they’d won. I knew, because it just felt right, in that moment, for the universe to fall my way for once. I held the smoke in my mouth while I started unbuttoning my cuffs and rolling up my sleeves.

“My friends beat yours.” 

My spirits pulled, grabbed, wrestled all together, holding her firm. Each of them was some secret I’d been forced to learn, a different technique from a different tradition, a different pocket of belief I’d had to scrape through in my desperation to find power again. They were ugly, but they worked. They’d come when I’d called. I’d strained to summon them, but—just like the allies I had in sewer tunnels killing ghouls—they’d come, one way or another. I held them here by pure force of will, sheer strength of personality. Black magic at its best.

“My spellcasting beat yours.”

Once my sleeves were neatly rolled and tucked up, I reached, calmly, slowly, certainly, for my pocket. I pulled out my tactical folder and thumbed it open. The mono-edge caught the light and the little cats-eye of orichalcum winked in the darkness as the blade locked into place.

“I beat you.”

I breathed it out like a prayer, like the triumphant exclamation at the end of a marathon I’d been running, day and night, awake and asleep, for the decade and more since she’d taken my Talent from me, and left me only my skill.

“I won.”

She spat curses at me in languages my headware didn’t understand. The weapon focus did the job, regeneration and vampirism be damned. Half a lifetime ago, she’d gotten drunk on my power and stolen the life-that-would-never-be from me. I didn’t think about Dr. Minirth. I didn’t think about Ari. I thought about myself, and the Talent she’d drained from me, and the knife in my hand.

“Why didn’t I find you years ago?”

There, in the dark, I carved the life out of her. Just me and my little weapon focus, while an army of spirits held her down and watched.

Then, and only then, did I light up another Target—with magic, this time, the minor ignition spell coming to me almost easily, for once—and figure out how to open the damned door and get back to my friends. 

My personal darkness was tucked back away. Ol’ Jimmy Kincaid sauntered out that door, shirt rumpled, bat propped on one shoulder, bruised, battered, but managing a smile for his friends. 

It was a new day. I wanted to get topside, wanted to let some cool Puyallup rain fall, to wash my hands of her blood and the fear I’d had of her for all this time. First I had to see how many had made it, of course.

Hell of a morning.

CHAPTER 40

Back in the antechamber, they were taking stock under harsh green lights. Billy Bricks was dead, but I’d already guessed that. Trig, an Ancient, had gone down, too, pulled to pieces while I’d watched, and so had Supes and Hogleg and Roly-Poly, more elves in black and green leathers. Castaigne, the Fast-Response washout, had taken a shot to the head, dead before Daisy could reach him, maybe before he’d hit the ground.

Blue’s arm had gotten bit—gotten bit bad, she was joking with Sledge about getting a nice titanium replacement—but Daisy and the slap-patch had done their job, Rook reassured me, after he’d cast a detect infected spell again, ready to share the bad news if he must. Pink had lost some blood, but would make it. Blitz, too. Sterling was touch-and-go, but Daisy had taken a shine to him, so even as she chanted and poured healing magic in, she was carrying him out toward the sunlight.

Chase sauntered over toward his big Suburban—maybe he had a change of clothes in there—and was the first to see the body.  Ricks, the man we’d left outside, was a bloody heap.

“Th’hell—” Chase got out, hands blurring for his Carnivores, guns appearing like magic, up and ready, hammers back.

The rifle shot pegged him square in the ten-ring, middle of the chest, and he fell back, coughing blood.

Pinkerton, Granger, and Blue, the former cops, all dove for cover the fastest, but Granger wasn’t quite quick enough, a follow-up shot took the top of his head off. Bushido Blitz moved like lightning, darting to grab Chase’s stupid leather duster, doubling-over, dragging him into the shadow of the Suburban where Rook was waiting with a desperate healing spell.

The next shot missed Sledge’s bald head, taking off the tip of an ear instead when the big street samurai’d tried to line up a shot. The one after that took one of Hardpoint’s gun-drones—only just relaunched, the only one that’d survived the tunnel fight—out of the air in a spray of sparks.

From my spot amidst the parked cars, I could see old Ricks’ body, torn wide open. A knife hadn’t done that, or even a sword like Blitz’s. Claws and teeth had done that, and animalistic rage, tinged with impotent frustration at the death of a master.  Something animal-wild and animal-angry, the same claws that had torn the Weazelys wide open and opened up my belly.

Fuck me. Why hadn’t I checked for his body, down there in the dark?

“Sammy Bones!” I called out, loud as I could, using my old Lone Star command voice. The next shot didn’t come on schedule. I’d caught him off guard.

My team, pinned down, half-dead, fidgeted. Half of them were hugging the ground in the shade of Hardpoint’s big van; if all we’d had was smaller stuff to hide behind, we’d likely all be dead by now.

“Sammy Bones!” I yelled again, trying to tuck myself as tight as I could against my Ford, before my next holler. “I cut out her fucking heart!”

I heard a howl from somewhere far off, and my TacWhisper added it to the ballistics data it was already compiling. It was an angry cry, a mournful wail. Good. Fucker. I remembered his claw in my belly, remembered the gut-punch I’d felt when I’d walked into the Weazelys’ apartment.  Another shot rained down, making me duck down again, then another, also at me. He was good and mad, but that wasn’t doing his aim any favors.

Hardpoint’s cam-drones were back in the air, circling wide and trying to pinpoint the shooter. Blue stuck her fool head up, too, but Bones was busy shooting at me, so she didn’t die for it. Rook was still trying to patch up Chase, Daisy was pinned inside the tunnels with Sterling. Sledge was on the move, Caitlyn Caboose just behind him, Skip right on her ass; orks, like Marines, default to running toward the sound of shooting, God bless ’em for it.

Another shot spanged against my Ford’s armor, but I had to keep him focused on me, had to take the heat off my people. 

“Nimbus died scared and ugly and slow!” I shouted, trying not to think about what I’d done to her, trying not to think about the red mess I’d found in Hank and Darlene’s apartment.  We kind of owed each other, me an’ Sammy.

He fired again. I snaked my Colt up, held it sideways, flat against my car, just using the guncam and my cyberoptics link-up, looking where my TacWhisper told me to, where my Sideways had decoded as the ringing shots’ location.

“Third window from the left, sixth floor,” I grunted into my headware, letting Trace broadcast it to the whole team. “He’s got Ricks’ Ruger. Eight shots in the tube.”

“Fucker’s empty,” Skip snarled, doing the math almost as quick as my Transys and my Sideways. My orkish contingent charged, starting across the open ground to the boarded-up apartment building we’d tagged him in.

Ricks’ blood puddle had grown wide enough it touched my fingers where I crouched behind cover, and—like that contact was a starting gun—I found myself doing the same, vaulting over my Ford, sliding across the hood, taking off at a sprint.

I dumped a magazine into the window I’d last seen Bones shooting from—good luck reloading a bolt-action underbarrel tube while you’re getting shot at, you fucker—before my full-on run slammed me into the front wall of the apartment; or, not quite, as I bounced off Caitlyn like she was the front wall.

Sledge was already on the move inside, Yamaha rifle up, but Skip was close enough to snort when Caitlyn caught me.

For a bunch of assholes who’d never formally trained together—’cept me and Skip a few times—we worked pretty well. Her Ares, my Colt, Sledge’s Yamaha, Caitlyn’s blocky AK, we did all right for ourselves. The guy with the bulletproof arms took point, then Skip, me sandwiched between the ladies, and Caitlyn the Caboose held up the rear. We swept up the stairs, cleared corners, watched each other’s backs. We moved like professionals, even if we were a little rusty, even if I was the only one who’d been to an academy.

None of it helped.

He came at us out of the dark, and none of our low light or thermoptics quite managed to spot him. He raked Caboose’s back open to the bone, dragged his claws through her armor, dermal plating, skin, muscle, and darted away faster than she could fall.  Jesus, Buddha, and Zeus, but he was quick. This wasn’t me blindsiding him with a Ford he wasn’t expecting. This was him hunting us, all jungle cat. Shadows turned to muscle and claw and then turned back to shadows. Impossible to track, as quiet and deadly as only an adept’s magic could manage, fighting like a pure predator for all that Sammy Bones was a scavenger at heart.

We turned, I knelt over Caboose, and he was gone. Sledge half-spun again, putting his back to Skip’s, who was almost as broad-shouldered, and they held there for a heartbeat while I did what I could for Caboose.  Sammy didn’t give us much time to catch our breath between his first and second passes.

The ghoul blurred in again, Sledge’s Yamaha barked and bucked, and the ork turned a half-circle, chasing Bones with the stream of autofire, not quite catching him. Sammy doubled back as Sledge’s empty magazine dropped free, and he was in—in and slashing, snarling, feral—before Skip could get a bead on him. Sledge slashed back with implanted blades, Skip kicked, and in a heartbeat the ghoul had scurried back into the darkness on all fours, but not before taking off half of Sledge’s right cyberhand in his mouth, and not before his claws raked dangerously high on Skip’s leg, barely missing that artery.

We knelt in the darkness, me whispering in Enochian, “Cnila, cnila, cnila,” over and over again, keeping Caboose from bleeding out, then pouring myself into Skip. Sledge had his sidearm out in an awkward, off-handed grip, Skip still had her new Ares, silly pink plastic bright in the shadows.  

Against an adept like this, just the few of us, just a couple of guns weren’t going to cut it. His magic gave him too many tricks, honed him into too sharp and quiet a monster, for smartguns and toughness alone to take him out.  He was faster than cybereyes could process, he was claws in the dark, a nightmare come to life in a building this dark, his natural environment.

Out of nowhere, Skip glared and whisper-snarled at me.  She kept her gun up, but gave me a sidelong look even as her Ares scanned her part of the room fruitlessly.

“You wanna know why I hate you sometimes, Jimmy?”

I licked sweat from my upper lip, trying to keep the casting going, trying not to let her remarkably ill-timed question distract me. She didn’t care that I didn’t answer, just kept badgering through gritted teeth, frustrated with everything about this cat-and-mouse situation, and scared enough to finally tell me the truth.

“Because you keep tryin’ to act like one of us when you ain’t.” 

I looked from bleeding ork to bleeding ork, met Skip’s eyes and couldn’t hold her glare.

“So do your fucking job, elf.”

She was right. I wasn’t her or Caboose or Sledge. I wasn’t more or less than them, but I was different. I had more to offer than guts and guns, more weapons to use than blades and bullets. Adversary in my corner or not, Ariana in my pocket or not, I had a different job to do.  So I did it.

It just took an eyeblink to look on the astral, where no living thing could hide, only take cover. Sammy Bones’ adept-bright aura flared, made him easier to spot, not harder, where his internalized magic did the opposite to regular eyes. I pointed—with my Colt, Skip wasn’t all right about me only being a spellcaster—and started shooting, and the orks poured on fire in the right general direction.

Bones scrambled away, ninja-quick, still slippery, still magically so. He sprinted to put walls between us and blocked my line of sight, astral or not. 

I shifted my weight, careful not to pin Caboose, just kneel over her with the other two, and turned my head. Slowly, like Bones was a big cat and too fast movement might provoke him, slowly I turned, eyes up, watching for the glimmer of his aura.

Then I got a better idea.

“Ooanoan hami,” I chanted, feather-soft, using Enochian, old words for eyes-creature, eyes-creature, eyes-creature. Detection spells reach farther based on raw power. I didn’t spot him, didn’t know where he was.

“Ooanoan hami,” I kept at it, maintained the spell despite the strain, the exhaustion, the week I’d had. Despite the fear, the pain at seeing my friends hurt and killed, despite the unnatural, sorcerous terror that Sammy Bones’ adept magic allowed him to instill. Skip couldn’t cast it, Sledge couldn’t cast it. Only me. There was only me.

I didn’t sense him, didn’t feel him close, kept chanting, tense, praying that when he did break the radius of the spell, did ping on my sorcerous radar, I’d be fast enough to keep him from reaching us.

“Ooanoan hami,” I croaked, throat raw from a long night of similar chants, soul-aching chants, from channeling more magic in the last twelve hours than I had in ages.

“Ooano—” There. My Colt snapped around, my finger squeezed just right, iron sights cold and hard and lined up against the brightness, the sickly-bright wrongness of his aura.

He was fast. In the time it took me to register that he’d breached the range of the spell, the time it took me to twitch in the right direction, he’d gotten within just a few meters.  

It took the whole magazine, plus whatever Skip and Sledge threw in, but it did the trick. Stumbling, staggering, roaring at us as he charged, he eventually fell, clawed at the floor to reach us, then—whew—stopped, riddled with holes.

I slumped onto my butt, exhausted to my core. I just wanted to lie down in that filthy hovel covered in ghoul’s blood, and sleep.

Skip kept her head better and messaged Trace that we were okay, told her that we were coming out, sweetly reminded her that it would be lovely of them not to shoot us. Sledge got Caboose up in a fireman’s carry and was already moving toward the rickety stairs, sparing just a second to grunt and kick Bones’ corpse on his way.

There. Fucking there. It was over.

I hoped.

CHAPTER 41

We got some mileage out of Chase’s fancy medkit, I’ll tell you that. By the time I made it back outside, there was already a DocWagon med-evac taking off, with the elven gunslinger firmly aboard and the outside crew left staring down the barrels of miniguns, like they were to blame for him being hurt. Rook didn’t get so much as a thank you for pouring mana into the tridshow star to keep him alive—DocWagon wasn’t in the ‘thank you’ business—but the upside came when Blitz revealed he’d lifted Chase’s keys—old-fashioned Americana, like the rest of his public image, but with RFIDs that granted full access to his whole vehicle—during the mess.

The trauma kit was something special, and it helped the rest of us get patched up a bit. There were some Ares prototypes back there, too, guns and big Bowie-style knives Chase was supposed to show off in upcoming episodes. I waved for everyone else to divvy it all up, chewing on WhiteBrite and trying to keep my energy up. Something troubling was nagging at the back of my head, tickling at the tip of my brain, but I was doing my best to ignore it, to enjoy the victory, to smile while I watched my friends score some pretty sweet guns.

The Ancients, last to show up, were the first to leave. Rook took Chase’s big Suburban—whole kit and caboodle—with a couple of the other rowdy street-punks I’d recruited, off to joyride and have a wake for their dead. None of us complained about them getting the up-armored truck. The elven go-gang had paid a heavy price for having my back today, the least we could do was let them keep the priciest spoils of the little war.

Sledge and Hardpoint milled around a bit while grunting goodbyes, the ork bitching about his hand, the dwarf bitching about his drones. They’d both lost more oil than blood today, but neither was happy about it. Sledge had carried Caboose right into the back of the GMC Bulldog, and—according to Skip—he’d promised to drop her off, nice and polite-like, at a nearby Underground entrance. Gentry’d be in touch about their cut of the bounties, I figured, and I just gave them a tired wave as Hardpoint’s blocky van trundled away.

Daisy had Sterling settled into the Chrysler-Nissan Jackrabbit she somehow folded herself into. She had a medicine lodge not far away, and I knew he’d be safe there. The little electric car rolled away, engine straining like always, Daisy’s only concern for her hurt passenger stretched across the folding bench seat.

Blue was gone, too, not long after. She was wobbly on her streetbike—they were made for folks with, y’know, two hands—but before long her wireless compensated for the lack of a good grip, and she was cruising out of there. She was headed for the nearest Draco Foundation office, I was pretty sure, and was likely already doing math for how much a new arm would cost her. If she’d had the hand for it, I had the feeling she’d’ve liked to flip me off as she rode away.

Pink slapped me on the shoulder before he left, and then it was just me, Skip, Trace, and an ash-covered parking lot full of dead men’s bikes, littered with a few corpses.

We were too far south for Knight Errant to respond, too far from the district halls, the lower-middle-class rows of townhomes. Chase had needed his super-platinum DocWagon to get them to show up. This deep into the Barrens, we could’ve set off a nuke and the cops wouldn’t have checked. Tillman, or rather his day-shift twin, would probably laugh and hang up on me if I tried to call any of this in. 

I leaned against the side of my Ford, barely able to keep my head up, not wanting to think.

Skip stood there next to me, companionably silent for once in her life. Trace stretched out on the hood like it was a recliner, head propped up on the windshield, ankles crossed on the push-bar. 

“We did good work today, Jimmy,” the decker said, reaching out to punch my shoulder.

I nodded back, too tired to talk, taking a drag off a Target as I watched over the cycles and cars and the slain, the field of corpses and the motorbikes standing over them like tombstones. It was quiet. Almost peaceful, in a way. If Ari’d been there, it would’ve been a nicer moment. I pushed the thought aside, didn’t follow it, didn’t let myself go down that road.

Before too long, another pack of Ancients rolled up, a few riding double on combat-hogs, a bunch of them piling out of a low-to-the-ground sport coupe like it was a clown car. Blitz was with them, posing on his Yamaha Rapier in case Skip or Trace were looking. They weren’t.

“We’ll watch over the leftover wheels,” he said, hollering over the whooping and engine-roaring of the younger elves behind him, a bunch of kids who’d never been in the sewers, who thought the whole day was just good fun.

I knew they would. I knew eventually Sterling’d send some chummer for his, the Underground would have someone pick up Caboose and Bricks’ wheels, and all that.

Skip and Trace steered me away, Trace behind the wheel, Skip in the back seat, glowering like usual. 

I worried about Ricks’ old Nomad truck. Who’d be by to pick it up? I had Bushido’s word on it, the Ancients wouldn’t molest the thing, wouldn’t take off with it, wouldn’t let anyone else, either, but…who would Ricks have wanted to send for it? He didn’t have a family. He didn’t have friends.

How long would it sit there, gathering ash because of me?

Skip basically carried my ass upstairs, but I barely remember it. The Long Haul had worn off. The week—the night, the morning—I’d had finally caught up to me, and I crashed, hard.  Someone tucked me in, and I’d bet nuyen to nickels it was Trace, not Skip.

CHAPTER 42

Adversary pounced while I dreamed. In the comfortable darkness that consumed me, I heard him before I saw him: yowling, snarling, that high-pitched wail that keeps everyone in a big city awake at some time or another. He was a scruffy little bastard of a stray cat this time, all scarred up and covered in patchy, dirty fur.

“What?” It was the best I could muster.

“Look at you, taking a cat-nap.” The mangy stray looked smug, but then all cats do, even with one ear mostly missing.

“Piss off. I’m tired. You saw the night I had?”

“Oh, big man, conjuring some spirits. Whoopty-do, Jimmy. You did a little mojo, get over yourself.”

“More’n a little.” I scowled, floating in nothingness while the cat got to somehow walk around me, stretch, rub its filthy self against my legs, “Where’s Ari?”

“Eight tiny spirits and a handful of spells is hardly yeoman’s work.” It let loose a rusty purr, enjoying my discomfort.

“Yeah, well, it got the job done.” I bristled, kicking a little, nudging the mangy feline away. The Adversary-cat lifted its tail as it sauntered away from me, showing me its butt the way they love to do. Fuckin’ cats.

My Mentor cast a yellow-eyed look over my shoulder, eyes half-glowing again, gaze locking onto mine.

“Did it?”

CHAPTER 43

I jolted awake, almost falling out of bed. A fresh host of Corpsman warning messages let me know about my purpling body, the various stages of contusions that covered me from head to toe, the muscular stiffness that would invariably follow, warned against hairline fractures in my ribs, let me know it was monitoring me for continued concussive signs.

“Good morning to you, too,” I groused, dragging myself to my feet, trying to stretch and not quite managing it.

I settled for slumping against the wall, leaning there long enough to check my chronometer and see what time—hell, what day—it was, trying to clear my head from the after-effects of the Long Haul, the strain of the summonings, bindings, castings, overcastings. Everything was fuzzy, a little out of focus, a little off-kilter, and not just because I was still missing Ari, not just because Adversary was still being a prick.

A shower didn’t help, and neither did my empty fridge.

Things weren’t right. My power wasn’t all back, much less increased. Ariana wasn’t swooping around brightening my day, the Initiation hadn’t worked, Adversary wasn’t holding up his end of the deal.

Could they…do that? Could he?

I dragged on the cleanest clothes I could find—hell if I was going to try a fashion spell to clean anything today—and stumbled down the stairs. Chanchai had his noodle joint going, since it was late evening, a day and a half after we’d killed Nimbus and Bones, and I grabbed a handful of satay from him. The chicken was spicy, greasy, and nothing but meat on a stick, which suited my mood.

I gnawed and swallowed while the Ford did most of the driving, letting me think. I watched the sun go down, Seattle pollutants overpowering Seattle clouds, the sky turning brilliant reds and yellows, lighting the world on fire before darkness fell and the neon strove to push it away. Traffic was a bitch, but I didn’t care. I took my time, brooding.

The moon was up by the time my Americar parked itself outside Reynolds’ place. I made one last call before I got out. I checked my crumpled, much-abused pack of Targets before I headed over to knock on the door.

“Come in, Mr. Kincaid.” He didn’t sound surprised through the stoop intercom. I blinked over to the astral, checked out his wards on the way in, and ducked inside.

“I’m upstairs,” he called, and I followed the sound of his voice to his study. 

Reynolds sat behind his desk, smiling as I entered. He had paperwork everywhere, both classical and digital/virtual, I’d caught him in the middle of something.

“Preparing for tonight’s lecture, you see.” His long arm swept across the whole table, gesturing to all of it and none of it, “My night class starts in just a bit, but come, come, sit down. How is the case progressing?”

“Done.” I slumped into his guest chair, glad to sit after the stairs’d taken the wind from me.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Done,” I said again, leaning forward to poke through the stacked datatablets and folders, finding the ashtray.

“May I?” I jiggled my pack of Targets.

“Yes, of course, of course.” He waved back as I fished in the box for a smoke. “This is certainly worth celebrating!”

“Yeah, it is,” I nodded, flicked my Target into my mouth. I jostled the pack, got him one to poke halfway out of the box, offered it up. 

He took it, long fingers dexterous and nimble, sure with a cigarette. He’d quit, maybe, but the hands never quite forgot.

We lit up, and I leaned back, letting out a smoky sigh.

“It was a vampire,” I said, lip curling a little. “Like I thought. ‘Nimbus,’ she called herself.”

“‘Nimbus,’ you say? Isn’t that the one that maimed you?”

“Yup.” I nodded, sighed again. “That’s her. Spotted her coming and going from Minirth’s office, regular meetings, like.”

“I do believe…” He puffed away, brow furrowed, but plucked something from a desk drawer, “Yes, here it is. Here. Could he have been integrating her into his research?”

He slid a little datachip across the table toward me. I knew the sort. Ridiculous memory in a tiny package, the sort of thing that’d fit snug in the bottom of his low-end commlink, the tablet I’d had Gentry crack for me that first day. 

“What’s on there?” I looked up, dragged my gaze away from that treasure trove of files, eyebrow raised.

“Haven’t the faintest.” Reynolds shook his head, his cigarette already half-gone. He missed the tobacco; I could tell from how he was going to town. “It was encrypted, you see. Might be, still, for all I know. It was for you, he said.”

I almost coughed.

“Left for you in his will, Mr. Kincaid. Upon completion of this investigation. There’s also this, of course.” Like an afterthought, he produced a credstick. One with a gold band on it, high value. Important to me, forgettable to him.

“Of course.” I pocketed the credstick, Reynolds’ eyes on my hand while I did, like he was waiting for me to grab the datachip.

“Aren’t you…Mr. Kincaid, aren’t you curious to see what’s on it?”

“For the week I’ve had? I’m hoping ten, twelve grand, maybe.”

“Not the money, you…the data!” His hands waved, gesturing with the glowing cherry. “The information, Mr. Kincaid! The knowledge! Who knows what he could’ve left you?!”

I shrugged.

He stabbed the cigarette out—not much of it was left, anyhow—angrily, rubbing, grinding, like he was close to losing his temper. My PeopleWatcher confirmed it, though the biometrics data was a little wonky, obfuscated by the vanity-driven illusions Reynolds draped himself in to look younger.

“Mr. Kincaid…” It sounded like I was an undergrad again, his tone icy cold, eyes going half-lidded. “This is why you remain such a disappointment.”

“I did your job, Doc. I got Minirth’s killer. Tracked her and a pack of ghouls halfway across the city, got people killed, got monsters killed, alla that, you don’t ask me a damned thing about. But the chip? The chip, here, you want. You want it real bad.”

“I’m merely curious, Mr. Kincaid. Fascinated. It is the mark of an academic to—”

“To ignore a dozen or more deaths, to ignore the murder of your friend, and to only worry about what files he left behind after he was killed?”

“It is the mark of an academic, a proper thaumaturge, to care about knowledge, Mr. Kincaid. To care about the natural laws and ways to circumvent them, to—”

“Natural laws like aging?” I couldn’t help but take the jab, see if he’d rise to it.

“To find ways around the limitations of the physical sciences, and to manipulate the magical power that some of us are lucky enough—lucky enough, Mr. Kincaid!—to have been born with. A proper Hermetic doesn’t sully his power with computers and mechanical eyes and ears and nonsense filling his head, no, a proper Hermetic focuses on—”

“Power?”

“—on what he can do with his abilities, Mr. Kincaid, to change the world! To make it better! Not just to run off to some, some, gun-waving Lone Star nonsense, but to—”

“Cops don’t make the world better?’

“—to learn things, to teach others, to do research and add to the knowledge of the human race! Not to squander their power in the gutter, waving around a gun and a badge, mucking about in the slums like they’re nobody, or nothing at all!”

I let him have his little rant. It was an old one. He’d been singing the tune for a long time, ever since some of my first aptitude tests, some of my first exams. He’d been disappointed, disgusted that I was a Lone Star hire, there on scholarships, destined for combat duty. He’d fought with Minirth over it—good old Chris, who’d just wanted me to do whatever I could, so long as I did it well—all through my years at U-Dub, he’d bickered and badgered, tried to push me toward theoretical works, not practical.

“Look at yourself, Mr. Kincaid! Look at what you could be capable of, if you only just tried! You Initiated so fast, even here, in the program, but you always just moved on to the next metamagical technique, always went to Christopher’s next lecture, always wanted to pick up a new trick instead of focusing on your overall ability, your synergistic, magical whole!”

I stubbed out my cigarette, wishing it was in his eye, not an ashtray. I was sure, now. Sure the tone was about to change, sure the conversation was about to take a turn toward the bloody. Halfway to force the issue, halfway just to shut him up, I cast a spell.

“What are you doing?”

“You know,” I said, leaning back in the chair to get comfortable while I could. The spell fizzled, worthless, inconclusive.

“Was that a detection spell, Mr. Kincaid?”

“You don’t need to understand the Enochian to know that, Doc. You’re a better wiz-worm than that. You know full well what I cast.”

“Why on earth would you…how dare you? How dare you cast that spell in this home, after what happened to Christopher?”

“Relax, Doc. Results were negative. I didn’t sense a single vampire. Not a sanguisuga europa to be seen.”

“And why was that a concern?”

“No, not a vampire. Not like Nimbus. ‘N,’ in Minirth’s notes.”

“Yes, the…the gutter trash, the one in the sewers, living like an animal. She attacked you, she killed Christopher, she—”

“But that’s a really specific spell, Doc, the version you gave me. I needed to research something else from the archives to track ghouls, for instance. Yours only picked up the Ghilany Vrykolakivididae strain of HMHVV, precisely. Every strain of the human-metahuman vampiric virus, it’s a little different, after all. Minirth studied that. He taught me that. Hell, I think he was the one who taught you that.”

“I don’t see what this has to do with—”

“The virus changes the proper scientific classification of the target, doesn’t it? Some Aussie with ‘Detect Koala Bear,’ he’s gonna be hosed if there’s a Drop Bear sneaking up on him, right? Different strains of the virus, too, interacting with different branches of metahumanity, they give you a different outcome, right? Different monster every time. Trolls can go dzoo-noo-qua or fomóraig, can’t they, depending on the strain? And the wrong spell, if the spell’s that specific, won’t help you one tiny bit in identifying them.”

“That’s enough, Mr. Kincaid. I hardly need a lecture from—”

“HMHVV I, HMHVV II, all different. Dwarves flip the script a little bit, though, huh? One strain makes ’em go Goblin, homo bestius, not the brightest, but another strain makes ’em smarter, makes ’em a Gnawer instead. It’s a funny old world.”

“Mr. Kincaid, I will hear no more off—”

“Elves get hit differently, too. Harvesters are creepy little fucks, hardly a life worth living. A Banshee, though, strain one? Noxplorator letalis, they’re still smart, they renew their magic, they live forever.”

My elbows rested lightly on the armrests, hands close to my belt, my gun, my wand, my knife. He was beaten. He knew it, I think, knew I’d figured it out. Knew I’d trapped him.

“You weren’t sure, Doc, were you? What would happen if an elf got the third strain of HMHVV?”

“It’s…it’s a waste, Mr. Kincaid. A terrible waste. What Nimbus did to you, so much of your potential gone, it’s slovenly and sloppy and shameful.”

“Was that what you wanted, all along? Me, Infected?”

“Or Christopher! Him, too! You’d get your power back. Your potential! And if you did, I’m sure that you would take your studies more seriously. Your ally spirit, Mr. Kincaid! Her formula! You showed such ability, such flair, before Lone Star took you away!”

“Jesus. You fucking weirdo. Was that why you framed her for it? Why you used your illusions to look like her when you left Chris’ office, why you left me that trail of bread crumbs to follow? Because you wanted me to see her, to track her down, to get bit by her, turn banshee?”

“I was doing you a favor, Mr. Kincaid.”

Well, his lack of denial confirmed my little illusion theory. I’d been on a tail-chaser the whole time, wasting my time and getting people killed in sewers. I did my best to hide my anger, just pressed on with questions, keeping at him.

“That wasn’t why you killed him, though, was it? That was why you used his murder to get me to go after her, sure. Because you weren’t sure, you didn’t know what would happen if an elf got strain three. That’s why you wanted her to do it, wanted me get infected by her, instead. But why kill him? He was your friend, your—”

“He was researching something he shouldn’t have. At first, I toyed with him, helped him with it. I read over his shoulder while he checked findings, read journals, compiled his data. Then it wasn’t fun. It was…troubling.”

“Troubling. Academia’s cutthroat, Doc, but murdering him because you didn’t like his writing? Killing him to keep it from getting out? Using his murder to…to…what, steer me toward getting Infected, as icing on the cake?”

“I couldn’t risk it, the prior results were inconclusive, the scientific community is split as to the certainty of what a strain three infection does to you homo sapien nobilis, and—”

“That was the ‘N’ in his record book. Not her, not Nimbus. You, looking like Nimbus on your way out, smiling for the camera. N. For Nosferatu.”

His illusions bled away as he stood, the posturing old man’s vanity spells revealing something worse than thinning gray hair, something worse than wrinkles. His hair was gone, smooth as a ghoul, impossibly, inhumanly bald. He wasn’t just tall Dr. Reynolds, no, he was scarecrow-thin, gaunt, all bony angles and a lack of internal organs. His teeth weren’t falling out, weren’t dentures or implants, they were fangs, incisors long and sharp and lethal as Nimbus’ had been.

“When were you certain, Mr. Kincaid?”

He drew himself up tall, clouds parting just so for the moonlight to stream in through the window behind him, framing him. He looked powerful. He looked unafraid. He looked exactly like he wanted to.

“Your smoke.” I nodded to the ashtray, to his cigarette butt, one I’d gotten from Flip and Belial as payment for services rendered.

“Laés. Imported, straight from the source, payment for another gig. When it didn’t knock you out, I was pretty sure. Immunity to pathogens and all, right out of the field guide for Infected.”

“Indeed.”

I stayed in the chair. It was a comfy chair. He loomed over me, backlit, predatory, the most powerful strain of HMHVV mankind had yet encountered.

“So what now?” I tried to sound casual instead of mad, sad, terrified, murderously angry. “You out to kill me, or bite me?”

“Maybe,” the Nosferatu smiled, teeth gleaming, “A little bit of both.”

CHAPTER 44

He opened by kicking his desk at me, into me, halfway through me. It slammed into me high in the chest—I probably should’ve gotten out of the chair, in retrospect—and sent me sprawling, tangled beneath it. I strained and kicked, shoved, twisted; it was too heavy for me to shove off gracefully.

Reynolds casually lifted it off, a backhanded swipe sent it partway through the wall, just an incidental part of his grabbing me, hauling me to my feet by the upper arms.

“You see, Mr. Kincaid? How powerful this form is? Think of what you could do with this body!”

I headbutted him. It hurt. He flicked me away, offended more than injured.

“Let me help you, damnit! Let me help the rest of the Order! We needn’t be graying old men, tottering toward our graves! We can live forever!”

My wand leaped to my hand—fucking Adversary, I could use a little help here—and poured everything I had into a hot-cast combat spell. He crossed the gap between us with a single step, gangly arm reaching out and palming my wand. I channeled mana anyway, felt a fresh wave of exhaustion weaken my knees, but got the reward of seeing a bomb go off in the palm of his hand, light seeping out between his knuckles, bones back-lit by the blast of light I’d loosed.

Sunlight, that is.

He howled in pain and rage, right arm a stump just below the elbow. His left lashed out—yeah, I’d made him mad—and I went flying, left arm breaking from the impact, wand lost as the room slammed sideways around me and I pounded my head into, partway through, the wall plaster.

“Nguh.” I tried to get to my feet, but then he was on me again, his good left hand clawing, groping, gouging at my face. I braced my legs against him and pushed for all I was worth, staving him off, using my elf-long limbs to try and counter his misshapen Nosferatu build, and kind of coming up even.

I groped at my hip and came up with my knife—mono-blade sharp, soaked in combat magic—and a few good cuts drove him back. I couldn’t slash for arteries and veins, not meaningfully, but I could just hack at him, dig in the blade, make it hurt.

He lunged backwards, hissing at me, in that second every bit as feral as Bones or Nimbus. His wounds smoked, magic hurting him as much as it did everything else in this fucked-up Sixth World…but me without much magic to spare.

Ariana wasn’t here to save me. Adversary wasn’t smiling on me. My wand was gone, somewhere in the madness of the room, and without that focus I could barely cast a fishing line. My Corpsman yelled at me as I transferred my knife—the only thing keeping him at bay—over to my broken left arm, still trying to hold it high, to keep it between us. Bones grated, and I felt them do so, Sideways or not.

The flashing weapon focus warded him back, gave me a wall of pain between us. I dragged myself up the wall to my feet, he paced like a tiger, back and forth, casting a long shadow from the moonlit window behind him. 

I hauled my Colt out, feeling like it weighed fifty pounds.

He laughed.

“Now you’re just being ridiculous, Mr. Kincaid.” He crossed his arm-and-a-half, looking smug, self-righteous, certain that I’d just failed an exam that I’d, perhaps, started off with promise.

I lined up the sights, the gold-winking smartlink targeting pip, and squeezed the trigger a few times.

He twisted, inhumanly fast, slicker’n Sammy Bones and ten times as lethal. The bullets sailed past him, smashed into the window frame, the wall, the glass. They were expensive rounds, I’d loaded heavy after the sewer job. Explosive ammo, every squeeze of the trigger cost me close to ten nuyen.

Not a one hit him, not a one blasted a crater in his Infected flesh. They peppered the wall behind him, blasted out glass, punched holes in the brick. Moonlight and Seattle clouds poured into the silence that followed the rapid fire, the sharp reports in such an enclosed space.

He smirked while my slide locked back, Colt empty.

“Really, Mr. Ki—”

I threw the big pistol in his stupid face, buying myself a second to transfer the weapon focus back over to my good right hand.

“Enough!” he roared, sending out a wave of magical authority, sorcerous command, pure emotive rage. It was a powerful compulsive effect, and I froze, locked tight.

I wondered if it was the thing he’d used to drive Chris Minirth to his heart attack. Drain him of blood, weaken him, take away his power, then attack him with waves of emotion until he died? That might’ve been it. I couldn’t muster up the breath to ask.

“I have had enough of your insolence, Mr. Kincaid!” He waved his stump at me like it was evidence, eerie mist swirling around the ruin of his arm.

“Enough of this rudeness, this refusal of my gift! You are squandering your potential with your petulance, just as Christopher did with his own refusal! You are a shadow of what you could be, and the inefficiency of that simply rankles. That you would even think—even for an instant—that something so crass as your ridiculous little gun could threaten me, is—”

“Wasn’t…aiming…f’r you,” I said, locked jaw barely moving, but able, only just by the skin of my teeth, to growl out one last retort.

The mist coalesced.

Martin de Vries, vampire and vampire slayer, swung an oversized kukri, simply, brutally. Dr. Reynolds’ head tumbled off his body while he was still gloating at me.

“Took yer…fu’king time,” I slurred, sliding back down the wall, letting my legs go weak.

“Most people say ‘thank you,’ detective.”

“Yeah, you probably should.”

“I?”

“Got you th’fucker, didn’t I? Told you where he’d be, took care of the wards, got you an opening, had him distracted?”

“Yes, you clearly had him right where you wanted him.” De Vries looked at the ruin of the office, at my bloody face, my worthless arm, my torn, bloody clothes and the patchwork of ugly bruises they revealed.

“Damn straight I did.” I reached for my pack of Targets, jostled them to make sure I didn’t get another laés-laced one, and fumbled to light up.

“That’s a filthy habit, detective, that will kill you someday.” De Vries gestured, casting two spells at once like a jerk-ass. The smoke lit up, and I was levitated, gently lifted, held in mid-air while he righted the chair. I drifted over to it and he lowered me into it. It was a comfy chair.

Downtown being downtown, I heard sirens already.

“Yeah. But not tonight. Thanks, Marty. You should go.”

“You’ll be well enough?”

“Sure.”

So he did, fading back into mist, all antihero-ghostly, streaming out through the ruined wall and window, back into the night where he belonged.

Leaving me alone, bloody weapon focus handy, beheaded Nosferatu lying there, everything lining up just right for me to get the full UCAS bounty on one of mankind’s most dangerous predators.

CHAPTER 45

“I’m…ngh…I’m here as part of my ongoing, licensed investigation into the death of one Christopher Minirth, a prof at U-Dub.”

“Uh huh.” With three or four uniforms milling around, the Knight Errant detective had to pretend to pay attention, but just a little bit. He had clean shoes. Puyallup brats like me, we don’t trust folks with clean shoes.

“Check your records. Minirth died in his office. Documented as a heart attack, no investigation. So I got hired—” I was out of breath, but he cut me off anyway.

“Hired by the man you just killed?”

“Yeah, but I’m getting to that. That’s also why you mooks didn’t look into it as a murder. I got hired, I looked into it. There’s this whole vampire, red herring thing, it’s a mess.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. But as it turned out—” I grunted, squirmed a little, tried to get comfortable while they interrogated me. “It was Reynolds who’d killed him.”

“That’d be one Dr. Theodore Reynolds, ThD, who hired you to investigate it, and whose head is over there, and whose home you’re in, soaked in blood?”

I’ll admit, things weren’t going as neatly as I’d hoped.

“Yup, that’s him.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“What’s wrong with—do they not train you guys any more? C’mon. Besides his head being cut off, you mean?  He’s Infected.  Knight Errant’s got to have some fucking spell-slingers, get someone like a Dip down here, and they’ll tell you he’s a Nosferatu.”

“Uh huh.”

I tried to catch my breath, grouchy and tired.

“Look, right, okay. Sorry for the, the outburst or whatever, all right? Anyway. Reynolds is why you overlooked the killing, why you wrote it off as an accident. He’s a member in good standing of the Hermetic Order, he was right there when you scoped the scene of Minirth’s death. He told you the astral was clean, you took his word for it, because he just magically whammied whatever cops were on-site and just told you it was fine.”

God, was this guy actually writing down ‘magically whammied’?

“Reynolds and Minirth worked together. Hermetic Studies, right down the street. Minirth was into theoretical stuff, but was working on some parazoology, I guess. I don’t know, I haven’t seen his research.”

Because you pricks won’t give it to me, it’s on the floor right over there, I could reach out and grab it if you’d let me.

“Please, continue,” the Knight Errant dick said, probably playing a video game on his commlink instead of actually taking notes.

“And Reynolds was infected. HMHVV.”

“A Nosferatu, yeah.”

“Yeah.”

“Right down the hall, roaming the campus?”

I could imagine the skeptical eye-roll from the detective, even if I couldn’t quite see it.

“Basically. Semi-retired for years, the nice old man taking up a night class, a fresh wave of undergrads coming in for him to sip from here and there. Wards wouldn’t catch him, he made ’em, maintained ’em. Detection spells wouldn’t work, he was the archivist who uploaded them, who taught ’em to everyone. You couldn’t eyeball the prick, he used illusion spells to mask it, we all just thought he was just—look, we’ve been over this, man.”

“Uh huh.”

“Reynolds eventually gets the courage to approach Minirth. ‘Hey, you seem cool, want to live forever?’ he asks, but Minirth tells him to fuck off, threatens to report him, starts taking careful notes about him, wanting to involve the authorities, but also aware this is a unique…ngh… research opportunity. Minirth’s crazy, he’s an academic. Reynolds is crazy, HMHVV plays with your head. So Minirth strings him along, Reynolds eventually gets tired of it. He’s upset enough about the rejection, and paranoid enough about Minirth’s research that eventually he snaps and kills him.”

“With a heart attack.”

“Man, you know how many tricks Nosferatu’ve got?”

“No.”

“Well, it’s a lot, okay? Read a fucking book.”

“I have quite a few on the subject,” said a more level voice, more confident, not grunting and snarling like me, not sarcastically disinterested like the detective I wanted to punch in the neck a few times.

It was Dylan Pike, leader of the Hermetic Order of the Auric Aurora, owner of the Blue Moon Lore Store, and regional authority on all things magical.

“That—” He pointed to the pieces of corpse. “—is a Nosferatu.”

“This—” He pointed at me. “—is the man who killed it, and who is owed a bounty.”

“That—” He pointed to the Knight Errant officer who’d been kneeling on my back this whole time, making the interrogation even more awkward. “—is a man who needs to be somewhere else. Along with, I do believe, the rest of you. Out.”

It’s funny, but when orders come from a man wearing what pop culture tells you is a wizard’s robe, this greatcoat adorned with softly glowing runes, pointing at things with a classical wand, doing all of it knowing he’s got a reputation—and formal licensing—with the authorities? People listen.

I could breathe more easily without the monkey on my back, and while my Corpsman still warned me against any sort of exertion, I worked to get up off the floor. Pike helped me up, using his own two hands, more down-to-earth than Martin de Vries, despite all his power.

“You, Mr. Kincaid, seem to have had a busy night.”

I wobbled over to my new favorite chair and dropped into it. Lodge Master Pike gestured and a bound spirit of Man drifted over from the astral. Together they knit me back together again while I told the whole, sad story.

Again.

Pike’s spirit—a flawless Hermetic elemental, a ghostly man-shape made of raw magical power and human spirit—faded when he was done with it, leaving the two of us alone.

“I should have paid more attention to Theodore,” he said, brow furrowed. “He’d been acting erratically lately, but we all thought it was…academic eccentricity. None of us would have dreamed he’d have dallied with the Infected, somehow tracked down a willing creature to share the disease with him. And then to have killed Christopher so suddenly!”

“No, I don’t think that was it.” I rolled my shoulder, still stiff, but well on the mend. “He’d been a Nosferatu for a while, I think. He’d obsessed for a while. Wanted to extend lifespans, wanted to share his gift. He wasn’t brand new to it. Something changed, recently, though. Something made him more…sick.”

I thought about Pinkerton’s shared reports, thought about the rise in missing persons cases, thought about how nasty ghouls had been lately, about Martin de Vries’ recent vampire troubles.

“Regardless, Mr. Kincaid, you have the Order’s apologies, and its congratulations.” He clapped his hands together, trying to find a bright side.

“Congratulations?”

“You have done us a great service, James, and yourself as well. Revealing this corruption, uncovering it, removing it from us…it was a distasteful service, of course, but necessary. You have my thanks, and that of the entire organization.”

He gestured, a simple telekinetic manipulation spell, and a few pieces of jewelry flew my way from among the wreckage.

“Take these, earned in fair challenge.” One was a white gold chain with a white gold Order seal on it, the other was a University of Washington class ring, blood-red ruby mounted, Thaumaturgical Studies designs on one flank.

“No one can deny that you bested Dr. Reynolds here tonight,” he said, and I didn’t feel like correcting him. “While such duels are…frowned upon…and challenges of this magnitude are generally forbidden, they are still, formally, legally binding. Goods and knowledge may exchange hands as the result of a sorcerous duel. Clearly, in his illness, Theodore sought to take your life from you. In exchange, I say, let all his topical belongings—his library, these foci—fall to you, if you want them.”

“I helped him make those,” Pike continued, voice low, thick with regret and sadness. “They are spell foci. The ring for health magics, the necklace for illusions. Some of our best work. I am sorry for having done so. He used the chain to hide his appearance, and even I thought it was just to appear younger, healthier. The ring, in retrospect, I fear could have been even worse.”

“Alleviate allergy,” I sighed, tossing it, letting it fall into my palm. “Maybe something like fast?”

“Precisely so. He may have still felt some discomfort, of course, no doubt why he largely limited himself to night classes, but it was the key to his long-term survival, his long-term deception. Health magic, as you well know, is diverse. He likely used it for exactly such things, controlling his disease, convincing himself he had mastered it. It’s a small wonder he thought he should approach us, offer to share the infection. If he thought it could be controlled…”

“Yeah.” I pocketed both foci as I stood up. I had other spells in mind for them. I’d worry about it later.

I reached out to shake Pike’s hand.

“Don’t beat yourself up over missing it. At least you were around to see. I’m sorry I couldn’t help, sorry I wasn’t handy ’til it was too late.”

He shook, not as bone-crushing as most, but a firm, polite handshake.

I shuffled around, stiff-legged, recovering my things. Knife, Colt, wand, datachip, credstick. I didn’t remember what’d been knocked out of my hand versus what’d fallen out of my pockets while I’d gotten thrown around.

“Yes, about that. Your Order membership, Mr. Kincaid…”

“Yeah?” I tensed up a little, tried to shore up my masking, hide my aura. If anyone in this city could suss out your tradition or Mentor through assensing an aura, it was probably Dylan Pike. I kicked myself for being sloppy, for having already given him the chance to get a good eyeful of me. Black Magic was forbidden. Adversary was frowned upon. If I was lucky, if I got off easy, I was facing expulsion.

“…one thing I did agree with Dr. Reynolds on, regardless of his disease, was that your continued absence is a shame. You are welcome in our lodge house any time. No one wants to pressure you away from Puyallup—certainly not I, as I know the importance of home, James—but it’s a shame that it took a ghoul attack to get you to visit the Blue Moon. Please come by more often. Ariana is a treasure, and I believe she enjoys such visits, and over time perhaps you might, as well.”

He smiled, and I knew he meant it.

I smiled back, trying not to show my relief at the continued lie.

“We’ll see,” I said, wearily stuffing my hat on, heading toward the stairs. I still had to navigate the Knight Errant yahoos, get to my Ford, get home before this night—this fight—could really be over.

“We’ll see.”

CHAPTER 46

I let out a gusty sigh at the top of the stairs, looking at my own reflection for a second, focusing on myself instead of the big JAMES KINCAID written on the office-apartment door.

“I don’t want to do this,” I grumbled to no one in particular, opening the door, peeling off my much-abused coat, hanging it and my hat, shrugging off my suit jacket and draping it over a chair. I made a beeline for the study, shedding clothes as I went.

I sat in the dark, checking my chronometer, checking my headware for messages. Friends and allies and coworkers had touched base with me, in the hours and days since the sewer job, letting me know they were home safe, some in one piece, some in more. Everyone wanted updates on pay, everyone sent me the necessary account information. None of it was interesting, none of it was memories I’d be sad to lose, so I did the grunt-work. Accounting was terrible and mind-numbing, and my Transys would hold onto all it anyway, so there was no risk involved.

I killed time, forced myself to wait an hour, two. I checked account balances, filed the paperwork—complete with shuffled-over screen captures from my cyberoptics or Hardpoint’s drone-cams—needed for various bounties, did the math to see what cut I’d get to keep, how much money went elsewhere, how the shares were going to get split. I transferred a few bucks over to the room service tab at the Loveland Bump & Sleep, figured Gem could use a few more hot meals. I told my Transys to keep a note, reminding me to call her later and see how she was doing, really get to work tracking down this brother of hers.

For shits and giggles, I started in on Minirth’s research files. Most of it was encrypted—better get Gentry or Trace on that—but I could make out a little bit, enough to know it was trouble. What I could read was like the introduction to a text, or maybe the conclusion, or maybe a little bit of both. What I could read was heavy stuff. Mana cycles, straight out of Ehran the Scribe’s talks. Fluctuations based on belief and perception, some theoretical philosophies hypothesizing that belief in magic caused greater magic, and vice versa, theories that no one’d successfully proven or disproven. He mentioned the great dragon Lofwyr’s recent changes, the great dragon Hestaby’s eccentricities, the upswing in Infected attacks. He posited they were all linked, that monstrous behavior called for more monstrous behavior, he suggested a direct correlation between the rising mana cycle and unpredictable, inhuman behavior in certain paranormal species.

I filed it away for later. I had enough on my mind—the mind I was trying to keep blank—right now, had enough on my plate as it was. I had an appointment, of sorts. I had a debt to collect, a bet to formally win, something worth far more than Tillman’s fifty nuyen to pick up.

When enough time passed, I sat down. There, inside my circle, I pulled out my pack of Targets and my scuffed old lighter. I got a few candles going, then—double-checking it—I re-lit the crumpled butt of a smoke from one guttering little fire.

A special cigarette. Imported from the Tír. Even just that little bit, even just the fraction of a cigarette Reynolds had left, packed a thoroughly unhealthy dose of laés. The elven drug was a magical, medicinal miracle. An impossibility. It caused near-immediate unconsciousness and a chemically unexplainable memory lapse.

The one good hit I’d taken would only cost me thirty, forty-five minutes of memory, I figured. I’d forget some accounting, forget the soul-crushing monotony of filing UCAS federal paperwork. Whoopty shit. I wasn’t taking it for that. I was taking it to get knocked out. Deeply, impossibly asleep. The sort of unconscious a human can’t reach without help, the sort of immediate tumble Reynolds would have taken if he hadn’t been Infected. I needed the drug to get as dog-tired, as medically-induced unconscious as I’d been when my last narcotic had flushed my system, when the Long Haul had sent me halfway to another plane, left me so tired Adversary’d been close enough to taunt me.

It worked.

He was a Barrens brat, this time, looked like one of the kids you’d see down in Tarislar. A little elven punk, eight or ten years old, ash-smudged face, wearing the sort of rags you saw all the time on the street, vending-machine clothes that someone tried to stretch out for weeks or months at a time. He was too young, too slender, had too mean a glint in his eye, but this form of Adversary reminded me a little of Gem; another kid trying to look tough, like all the other kids on the wrong side of Puyallup.

“Jimmy, nice to see ya.”

“Thought you wouldn’t mind the shortcut,” I said, focusing in the dream, trying to form some solid ground for me to stand on.

“Nah, s’clever. Nice trick. No talking to the Dweller, the prick.”

“The prick.” I nodded, for once in total agreement with my Mentor.

“So!” The little ghetto brat rubbed his dirty hands together, excited. “Some fuckin’ day, huh? Hiyah, off with his head, am I right? Hell of a show, Jimmy!”

“Hell of a show.” I sighed, eyes down.

“But hey! That’s not what you’re after, is it? Null sweat, chummer. Ari’s all yours. She’s fine! Same as she ever was, solid as the day you built her, an’ just as easy on the eyes.”

He waved negligently.

“You’ll see, Jimmy. You wake up, she’ll be there, poof. Same as if she’d never left.”

“Same as if you’d never kept her from me.”

“Whatever.”

I sighed. He mistook my weariness for impatience, which I guess was fair. Normally I was kind of a prick.

“And that ain’t all, Jimmy! I didn’t forget, so cool your tits, eh pal? You’ll get your little level up, too. Not what you once were—that fuckin’ bitch, am I right? Friggin’ Nimbus!—but a little closer, a little closer. You’ll have a little more oomph, buddy. A little more razzle-dazzle. You earned it, my man.”

“Your man,” I breathed out, lifting my gaze.

“What’s up your ass, Jimmy?”

“Why didn’t Nimbus just kill me?”

“What? What do you mean? ‘Cause you fleeced her, pal. You said it yourself. What was it, like, six, eight spirits? Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am, you know? You swarmed her, man. She never saw it coming. Got her too mad to think straight, she couldn’t cast for shit, didn’t think of going mist and getting free, you nailed her, buddy. Nice work, all around!”

“No. Not now. Then. Back then. Why didn’t she kill me?”

“She was crazy! Who knows?” He shrugged narrow, elven shoulders, scrunched up his dirty face. “Broads, am I right?”

“Who told her not to?”

“What now?”

“Who told her not to do it? She said someone—‘they’—told her not to, back then. I was barely alive. Only just barely hanging on. As much of me was gone as could be, and me still havin’ a few scraps of magic. It’s an art, not a science, but that’s what the docs told me, back then. Any more, even just another sip, and I’d’ve been a total burn-out.”

“So, you got lucky! Don’t look a gift horse in the—”

“Lucky. Yeah. That’s just what I was gonna say. My unit wiped out, my ass kicked, my career in the toilet. My magic only just barely hanging on, my way of life shattered. No job, no family, no power, no friends. Lucky.”

“It coulda been worse, Jimmy.”

“How?”

“I came along, didn’t I? You ditched that straight-arrow Hermetic crap, figured out how to—”

“How to be your supplicant?”

“Hey, man, if that’s the word you wanna use.” He shrugged again, trying to look innocent.

“It’s not. An’ I won’t. I don’t know what mentor that crazy skirt followed. I don’t know if it was you, or some dark shadow of you. Or Wolf, I know some of ’em go crazy that way, same thing. Whoever. Whoever it was, they told her not to kill me. To leave me broken. Alone. Desperate. Lookin’ for a new way to look at magic, a new way to tap the mana.”

“I’m not sure I appreciate the implic—”

“Shut up. Whoever it was, whatever it was, I ended up with you. Not Dog. Not Dragonslayer. Not Wolf. You. I didn’t have to, but I did. I chose you. You didn’t choose me. I chose you.”

“Sure, Jimmy, and aren’t y—”

“Shut up. Just remember that, Adversary. I didn’t come to you, you came to me. I’m not your slave. You don’t own me. I own you. You’re part of me, not the other way around. I never cast another spell, you lose. I never call up another spirit, you lose. I go get a fuckin’ cyberspine installed—a cyberfinger, an extra datajack, anything—and you lose, cut right th’fuck outta my life. No more mojo. No more spellcaster, no more Mentor.”

I drew myself up, glared at the street-smart little hustler, the sharp-featured Barrens orphan who was always trying to play an angle. Adversary went to open his mouth again, but I cut him off.

“Remember that. I do your thing because I choose to. ’Cause my ideals line up okay, most of the time, and because your motto appeals to what Reynolds called my contrary nature. I use you ’cause you work for me. But I don’t need to. You don’t make me. No one makes me.”

I turned my back, thought very, very hard about waking up, and started to vanish.

“Good on ya, kid, you figured it out,” Adversary said in a deeper voice, an older one. It reminded me of me—or maybe my old man. “You don’t let anyone, even me, tell you what to do.”

I woke up.

Ariana had the apartment smelling like waffles and ash already, the kitchen a disaster area and her smile bright as the sun when I opened my eyes. She hovered there while I blinked and sat up, looking hopeful, holding up a plate of terrible breakfast, as glad to be back as I was glad to see her. It was like she’d never been gone.

It was perfect.

CHAPTER 47

My office door says most of it. JAMES KINCAID, PARANORMAL INVESTIGATOR. I used to be a college student, then I started learning. I used to be a cop, then I started helping people. I used to be a mage, then I figured out magic.

I grew up in Puyallup. One time I left this joint, I did some good for people, finished a case and helped ’em out. The other time, lots of people got hurt and I lost my whole career.

I belong here. I get that. It’s my home, it’s my place, it’s my natural habitat. I rub elbows with cops and with robbers, with bounty hunters and gangbangers, with monsters and with shadowrunners. I’ve got friends, here. Family here, in a way. I know people. People know me.

I’m Jimmy Kincaid, Initiate of the Sixth Grade. I’m a palooka with a gun and a wand, not a badge. I’ve got friends in low places, friends in high places, and friends scattered in between. I’ve got tricks most folks haven’t dreamed of, a Mentor that sometimes hates me, and the devil’s own luck. I’ve got an ally spirit that’ll make your head spin.

If you’re in the neighborhood and you need help, gimme a call. But if you’re bad, if you bring Puyallup trouble it doesn’t need, someone else will call me, instead.

And you don’t want that, believe me.