Black Alice: 4) Better Than Delivery

“Fine! All right, fine! But give me a minute to slip into something a little more dangerous. I’m not facing seven more of those things without my guns and whatnot.”

Irish nodded, tucking his sword inside his coat. “Be fast. I’ll wait around back, where you parked your car.”

I didn’t even ask how he knew what I drove or where I’d parked it. I did scoop up the creature’s head, and hustle back into my shop. Once inside, I pulled the door closed behind me, and leaned back against it for a moment. Gene must have heard the explosion, as he was standing there with my shoulder holster, my charm belt, and a tray of accessories I favored for general mayhem.

In the back of my head, the shadow was whispering. She didn’t use words. Despite living in my head for the last thirty-some years, she’d never really got the hang of verbal language. She was good at emotions, though, and right now she was broadcasting outrage and fear in equal measure. She knew as well as I did, if not better, what that dog creature Irish had discovered meant to us. Some thing from the outside had gotten in, had invaded Detroit, her territory. Our territory. And she was pissed.

So pissed, in fact, that I was shaking with rage myself as I slipped a small leather jacket on over the shoulder rig. Gene handed me my gun, an Israeli model Baby Eagle, and I checked the safety and load with my eyes closed. My hands knew the motions well enough that they didn’t need my input to do that. I took some long deep breaths and tried to calm the shadow. I needed to calm down, and I couldn’t do that until she did.

Okay, Irish was a threat to us, true. But I pictured some huge, glowering beast approaching us, the invader in our city. Then I pictured Irish stepping into the light, standing in front of the utangards invader with sword raised. I imagined Irish fighting and killing it as though he were a weapon that we had aimed ourselves. The shadow loved that idea, but was afraid we’d be caught at it. That he’d know, and come after us.

He won’t, I thought, as firmly and confidently as I could.

Unconvinced, she fanned out, feeling for observers and finding the blackened skull of the dog monster where I’d dropped it just inside the door. That sent her off on another jag of fury and wrath, and I pictured Irish dying, killed by the invader. The invader who we would then kill ourselves. Grudgingly, she subsided, sulking and tasting the otherworldly taint on the skull while I stashed extra clips of exotic ammo and added charms and rings and other baubles of varying deadliness. She was memorizing the taste and feel of it, preparing to search for more like it. Awesome. Good to see her on-task again.

Last of all, I put on the charm belt, a braided chain made of smaller links of copper, brass and silver. It rode low on my hips and was adorned by smaller doodads I could pull off at need. The thing to keep in mind, here, is that artificing is more an art than a science. I never know how well a creation of mine will work until I finish it and try it out. The belt was the best defensive talisman I’d ever made, but it had a few bugs. The clasp was an antique padlock, and I took a deep breath before fastening it.

I clicked the lock shut, and spasmed as electricity wracked my whole body. My vision faded for a moment, and I bit the inside of my cheek painfully, tasting blood. It didn’t last long, and when the belt’s current and field adjusted to my own body’s natural flow of energy the shock and pain faded away.

“Holy balls,” I gasped. “I gotta fix that,” I muttered, arming sweat off my forehead while I braced myself on the counter.

Gene handed me my keys and a thermos of the coffee, and I patted his shoulder on my way out. “Good zombi. Don’t wait up,” I told him, and I stepped outside to go monster hunting with Irish. My shadow flowed out with me, warning me I wasn’t alone right about the time the gun pressed into my back. She recognized the shape and taste of him, the flavor of his skin and sweat fresh in her memory. “Hi, Leo,” I said, waving my hand and causing the shop to lock and the wards to hum into life.

I turned to face him and heard him rack his gun. Something jabbed me in the belly and I dropped my gaze, seeing a rather large semi-automatic. I brought my gaze back up to Leo’s face. He was grinning. “I want my fuckin’ money back, bitch,” he growled, and raised the gun to point between my eyes.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I muttered, rolling my eyes as his gun frosted over. He pulled the trigger a second later, and the metal snapped under his finger. I punched him in the throat. He dropped to his knees bug-eyed and croaking, and dropped his gun to clutch his throat. The gun hit the sidewalk and broke into half a dozen pieces of icy steel.

I blinked, rubbing my knuckles with my other hand, glaring down at him. My heart was slamming in my chest, and I cursed the shadow roundly for not paying better attention. She was indifferent; she’d frozen the gun in time.

I was wearing my charm belt, but it wouldn’t have done much for me if she’d been slower. An awful lot of its protective magics were kinetics-based, intended to soak up and divert incoming force so that by the time anything hit me, it wasn’t a danger anymore. The boy had pushed the gun inside the belt’s range, though, and if he’d managed to get a shot off, my brains would be decorating my front door right now.

I let out a shaky breath, anger replacing surprise in a cold flood.

“You little shit,” I hissed, dropping to a knee so I could look him in the face. The shadow closed around him like a foggy fist. Slender black tendrils coalesced, twining around him, tasting him and drinking in his warmth. They explored his scalp under his hair, stroked his skin under his clothes, and even probed into his mouth. I felt his flesh stand up in goosebumps, his mouth go dry, and his muscles go rigid with shock and cold. I liked him much better paralyzed. I grabbed his jaw to hold his face, staring into his eyes. He wasn’t grinning anymore.

The shadow knew what was coming, and she reveled in it. Or maybe that was me, and the feeling was just reflected in her. Rain began freezing where it touched him, his clothes freezing stiff so they crackled as he shook. His eyes were the size of dinner plates, lashes speckled with ice, a line of spit frozen at the corner of his mouth. He made a series of horrified little squeaks, wannabe screams.

I glanced up and down the street. Down the block a bit and on the far sidewalk, the fire in Irish’s car had died down to a smoky smolder, leaving a blackened hulk. The fire department hadn’t shown up; not unusual. If they showed up for every burning car on a crappy street corner, they’d never have time to put out all the abandoned buildings that were on fire. The car alarms had petered out, and even with all that noise and booming, the street was empty.

I had time. And it had been a while.

The first time I’d done this, oh, years ago, it had been a desperate accident. I was weak, and afraid, and there was this thing inside me, trying to overwhelm me and I just couldn’t fight it anymore. I’d seen what I needed in the eyes of that nurse, and I’d taken it.

For the longest time, I’d thought it was some gift from the shadow, some outlander ability I’d inherited from her presence. I’ve learned better, since. This is the old craft, from those bygone days before magic was plentiful, back when magicians had to do some pretty dirty things if they ever wanted to be anything more than cheap hucksters with a few party tricks up their sleeves.

I took hold of Leo’s head, holding his eyes open with my thumbs. Close enough to kiss him, I gazed deep into those dark eyes, searching. Back in there, down in the depths of his eyes, was that spark, that necessary little flame that filled up a human being and made them something more than apes with delusions of grandeur. Down in there was his soul.

The shadow spilled into Leo’s open, gasping mouth, sending wisps into his eyes, through his tear ducts, up his nose. I felt the ice crystals forming in his blood at her touch, the tiny tremble of alveoli popping in his lungs. I felt her chasing down the hot, infinitesimal sparks of energy leaping from synapse to synapse in his brain and greedily sucking them down. I felt him dying.

I stared into his eyes as he died, watched his inner flame flicker. The shadow killed him, and I took hold of his flame, his soul, with my mind and my power, and I ripped it free and ate it.

I felt a hot, vibrant warmth settle into me. I felt sexy and strong and alive and I shuddered and sighed at the sheer rush of it. Mages haven’t had to do this sort of thing in years. We’ve developed past the point of having to use shoddy power sources like blood or sex, conveniently-timed natural disasters, or yes, souls, to fuel our magic. Back in the day, it was all we had, but distilling magical energy from shitty little sources like that is pretty time-consuming and inefficient. Nobody really does it these days. I mean, why would you, when refined magical energy is as freely available as air?

Nah, I didn’t want his soul for magic. I wanted it because I didn’t have one of my own, and without a soul… well, without that I’d fade away. Without that inner flame, I’d get weak and lax and long before I died the shadow would take me over completely. Without me to keep her in check, she’d feed and feed, consuming the light and warmth and life from this world until the very stars went out. And really, where’s the fun in that?

I wiped the rain off my face, enjoying the warmth of my own skin and almost laughing out loud at the feeling of it. I felt young. Strong. Leo stared up at the sky through a thin steam that rose from his glazed eyes.

I stood up, stretching until my back popped, and knocked on the front door to call Gene out. What’s the point of having a zombi servitor if you don’t use it for the scut-work once in a while? Somebody had to clean Leo’s husk up, and I didn’t have time for that.

The front door creaked open, and I glanced over my shoulder to meet Gene’s eyes, just as glazed and empty as Leo’s were now. I waved at the semi-frozen corpse.

“Tidy that up for me, would you?”

Without so much as a flicker of expression, Gene opened the door wider, and came out to scoop up the corpse. The other corpse, that is. I lit a cigarette and glanced up and down the street. Still empty. Excellent. “Don’t forget the gun pieces,” I reminded, pointing them out as I turned to head into the rain.

There was a teeny little parking lot back behind my store. It occupied the center of the block, and I shared it with a donut shop around the corner, a Vietnamese couple who lived above a check-cashing place and a rusted-out Ford pickup with broken windows that just turned up one day and nobody ever got around to having towed. I fully expected to find Irish, soaked, standing next to my currently hunter green ’71 Barracuda. Instead, the passenger door stood open, and Irish was inside, wiping down his sword with a handkerchief. I strode up to his side of the car, my boots clacking on the ice and pavement, leaning down to glare at him.

“How the hell did you get in there?”

Irish looked up from the blade, giving me innocent eyes. “Opened the door, Alice,” he said in a mild tone. “That’s how you usually get in a car.”

“It was locked!” I always locked it – had to, in fact. That’s how I armed the mobile wards. I stepped back, twisting to look at the lock on the door. “If you scratched up my paint picking the fucking lock, mister…” There wasn’t a mark on the car. I hmphed and directed another dirty look Irish’s way. He held up a greasy paper bag at me.

“Donut? Billy was out back having a smoke break. Offered me some of the day-olds.” I glared, waiting for a response. He just looked at me with solemn, innocent eyes and shrugged. “I’d've started it for ye, too, but I’m not entirely sure it’s got an engine.” He gestured towards the driver’s side, and I let out an outraged gasp. A slick, wet-looking mass of wires and string and more organic components was hanging out from under the steering column.

“Omigod, you tried to hotwire my car?” I darted around the car, fumbling my keys out to unlock the driver’s side, and pulled the door open. I crouched and leaned in, craning my head to see what damage he might have done.

“Those look suspiciously like blood vessels, Alice. Veins and such. And I felt a pulse.” Irish’s tone remained mild, but when I glanced up at him, he was frowning with displeasure. “I’d push the issue,” he went on, off-hand, “but we’re in a bit’ve a hurry.”

I grumbled a stream of curses under my breath as I tucked the assortment back up under the dashboard, feeling around in the warm, moist mass to make sure everything was still attached. Everything felt okay, but it was tough to tell with just my hands. I’d actually used the shadow for this tricky bit of work. Her tactile sensations are much sharper than mine, and she can reach into places I can’t. The wiring, some of which had involved living nerve tissue, was really sensitive.

I stood up, patting the roof of the car consolingly before getting in. I slammed the door shut, and Irish followed suit, still giving me that steady, unamused look, as though he was waiting for an explanation. I didn’t intend to satisfy him, so he could glare all he wanted. I found the antique copper key on my keyring, and slotted it into the ignition, turning it. There was an electric crackling noise from the general area of the starter, and the car roared to life, sounding less like an engine and more like the growl of a carnivorous beast funneled through a metal echo chamber. Irish started at the sound, staring towards the engine as the car rumbled. I glanced at his wide-eyed expression and snickered.

“Jaysis,” he muttered, half under his breath, shaking his head. He fished out a sugared jelly donut, and offered me one as I squeezed the old boat of a car out down the narrow access to the street. “Want one?”

“Nah, I just ate.”

Table of Contents / Chapter Five >>

Tags: James Agle, Marci Sischo, serial novel, urban fantasy