Black Alice: 5) Stuck at the Kiddie Table

“Fair enough.” He took another bite, and settled the sword more comfortably between his leg and the passenger door. “What’ve the beast, then? What’s all that about? You said it was a Corruption.”

I took to the street, the car thrumming with power and purring as we accelerated, and cracked the window to flick ashes out. “The old Ford plant, you said?”

“Aye. Just this side of Highland Park.”

“Okay. So, ‘Corruption.’ I’ve never heard that term before, but it’s a good word. It fits. Basically, you’ve got inside, that’s this reality, our world, et cetera, and you’ve got outside, and that’s everything beyond it. I’m really simplifying it, but that’s the gist of things.” I glanced over at Irish, who nodded, still wearing that somber frown. “So, you have natives, things that belong here, and you have the outlanders, stuff that doesn’t. Make sense?”

“Sure, the demon-kind. Vampires and ghouls and whatnot.”

“No, actually, those are all natives.”

“Excuse me?” Irish shifted in his seat to stare at me, managing to look incredulous with half a mouthful of donut and a smudge of raspberry on his chin.

“You heard me.” I hit my cigarette and exhaled a long stream of smoke. “I don’t know what your Order has to say about it, but those kinds of things are considered natives. Magicians,” I hooked a thumb at myself, “the vampires, werewolves, your Sasquatches and yetis, they’re all local boys. Used to be regular vanilla humans, before they were, to use your term, Corrupted. Since then, they’ve kind of bred into the population and gone native. They… we belong here.”

He was looking at me like I’d started speaking in Greek. He wasn’t following me. I decided to try another approach. “All right, take the faerie-kind,” I said, as Irish blinked in surprise as the gear shift adjusted itself. “The Fae, now, they really are outlanders. But they’re from practically next door, compared to most things.” Things like the one that lived where my soul used to be. The shadow preened in my head, pleased to be recognized as superior to the Fae. I wouldn’t exactly call it “superior,” but she’s alien, and her values usually make no sense to me. “They’re close enough to our world that they can survive and thrive here, but alien enough that they don’t fit. Their presence causes… side-effects. Ripples in reality. They don’t belong, and — this is the important bit so stay with me here, Irish. They can pass that alien taint on to things from our world. It’s actually a pretty good analogy. Have you heard of Black Dogs?”

“Aye. The Wild Hunt. Baskervilles. Sometimes a lone one will haunt the countryside, foretelling disaster or bringing it about.”

“Right. Those are regular dogs, earth-born canines that have been changed by the fae. A taste of faerie food, the touch of a sidhe noble, whatever. It changes them. Fucking fairies,” I muttered, grimacing despite myself. “They think they’re better than everybody else. Bunch of assholes. But anyway, the dogs we’re after today are the same kind of thing as those Black Dogs, just they got messed up by something a lot more alien.”

“Alice, I appreciate yer help, here, I do; but yer dead wrong.” He looked out the rain-streaked window and sighed. “The undead, werewolves, even…” he paused. “The powers of Hell have brought these things into the world.”

“You were going to say ‘even magicians,’ weren’t you?”

“Over the centuries, many have sold their souls for magic.”

I snorted. “Suckers. Look, demons can’t sell what they don’t have. And demons, okay, most demons, aren’t utangards. They’re made by mankind. Creatures of the Id, things powered by belief. They’re abstracts, not even as real as the pants you’re wearing.”

He punched the dashboard, and the engine snarled. “Alice! Will you listen? I have fought with demons, I’ve killed them! They are real! And the forces you play with, these magics you’re so proud of, are not ‘natural!’”

I cleared my throat and gave him a pointed look, hoping that would be sufficient to remind him that we’ve had this argument often enough that either of us could just about repeat it verbatim. “Agree to disagree?” I asked, tone arch.

“Aye,” he said, but as always, he looked uncomfortable with it. “But I worry for you, Alice. For your soul.”

I coughed, smothering a laugh, and tossed my butt out the window. Wow, had that ship sailed. “Right, utangards, things from outside; sometimes we call ‘em outlanders. One or more of them must have shown up here, and those dogs came into direct contact.”

“Bah. ‘Shown up.’ You mean one of your lot summoned it.”

I frowned. “Yeah, maybe. Doubtful, though. We have rules about that sort of thing. Serious rules, enforced by serious people. Sometimes things work out just right, and they can get in by themselves. Planetary alignment just right, or a lightning strike on a ley line crosspoint, or a dozen other accidents might open a door.”

“Does that happen a lot?”

“It might. See, the thing to remember is that our world is as alien to the outlanders as they are to us. Most of the time, they can’t survive here. It’s possible that a hundred times a day, some poor bastard falls into our world and dies instantly. Snuffed like a candle flame, or popped like a soap bubble. On the other hand, if they’re not from too far outside, they might live just fine, and not cause any harm. Might even blend in, pay their taxes, and so on.”

“But?” Irish was studying me, and my shadow squirmed mentally under the scrutiny.

“But.” I sighed. “There are exceptions. Mexico City, back in ’85, something came through and died.” I stopped at a red light, but I didn’t look over at him. “That was bad. It was from really far away, and it was really strong. Strong enough that it carried some of its reality with it. Rats got at whatever it left behind for a corpse.”

“That… does sounds bad,” Irish said.

“Fuck, yes, it was bad. What they ate changed them and drove them mad. They rampaged, attacking anything that moved. Other animals or people that they bit began to warp and change, too. It was mistaken for rabies, at first, so it went on for a day or two before any magicians noticed. They spread out from the incursion site like a plague. The infected chewed up anything that moved, tore things apart; even took to eating plastic and metal. When they’d eaten enough meat and other matter to make them swell up like leeches, they exploded. Explosively. Buildings came down, an overpass was collapsed. The debris from those living bombs spread the infection even further.”

“My God, Alice.” Irish had paled a bit, contemplating it. “I never heard anything about this.”

“Sure you did.” I lit another Camel and passed a car going too slow. “You’ve heard of the big quake in Mexico City. September nineteenth, 1985. Eight-point-one on the Richter Scale, it killed, like, ten thousand people. See, the local mages pulled out all the stops, called for help from all over, and sent in fifty-some of our best battle mages. Half of them died or were infected before the invasion was stopped. Three thousand people were killed.”

He was silent for a long moment. “I didn’t realize you lot were that organized. They used the earthquake to cover it up?”

“No, Irish. They caused the earthquake to cover it up.” The Arcana had organized that cleanup, and they killed seven thousand people to hide the circumstances behind the deaths of three thousand. The Arcana does not fuck around. That was why I went to such extensive pains to make sure they didn’t know anything more about me than I wanted them to. Hell, having them find out I was talking to Irish would be nothing compared to what they would do if they discovered I was a host to my very own outlander.

Irish was speechless for all of about four seconds before he rallied with, “Now you see why we hunt the ruthless bastards down. They’ve sold their souls for power they can’t be trusted-”

“Oh, stop.” I waved a dismissive hand at him. “Nobody sells their soul anymore. It’s a scam, and only a complete idiot would fall for it. Really, you give Hell way too much credit.” I’d wondered once if my shadow was demonic, back when I was younger. It passed all the litmus tests, so I was clear on that score. I’d have felt damn stupid if I’d sold my soul and all I’d gotten was turned into a life vest for a shadow.

Not that I actually remembered any of how it had happened. I had no memory of the time before I’d been possessed. My memories started at the tender age of ten or twelve, with me crawling up out of the Gulf of Mexico on some beach in Texas, shrieking along with the entity that had found itself trapped within me. Ah, memories. Good times. Maybe she just slipped into our world by mistake, and sheltered in me because I was there. Maybe I’d summoned it, or someone else did and offered me as a host. I had no way of finding out, and had stopped worrying about it. Mostly.

“But,” I went on, before Irish could get back to his rant, “staying focused, remember? Anything so alien, so toxic, that it could do that to those dogs of yours is too alien to survive without a host. We just need to find whatever corpse it left behind, if any.”

“Host?”

“Yeah. Sometimes things wear a local life-form like a sort of buffer. But that usually only happens if it was summoned. And we have serious rules about that, made by serious people. I did mention that, right? These are rules made by the folks who made that earthquake.”

“Ah.” We rode in silence for a few seconds. “The Corruptions can survive, though. And maybe spread the disease.”

“It’s not a disease.” Touchy? Me? “It’s more like …” I blanked and couldn’t think of anything that sounded better. “… radiation poisoning,” I finished, annoyed.

Irish glanced at me, and I watched him mentally score himself a point. The ass.

“So they can’t spread the infection?”

I flicked ash out the window, putting a firm cap on my annoyance. Wouldn’t want him wondering why I was so defensive about it, would I?

“No.” I glanced sideways at him. He was giving me that steady stare that meant he wasn’t buying it. “Probably not. Most likely not.”

“So you don’t know.” He shrugged, glancing out the window again. “Should’ve just said so.” We were there, which was good, because I was thinking about shooting him. “This is no good – we need to go around back.”

“What, on Oakland?”

“Aye.”

I passed the main entrance to the Henry Ford Museum and took the next left. The old Ford plant was huge. It had set the standards for automotive plants back in the early 1900s, and was largely responsible for Highland Park making it as a city. It was also responsible for Highland Park falling apart, too. When it closed for good back in the fifties, it decimated the local economy. These days there’s an underfunded museum and an out-of-service Imax theater, but the bulk of the property is used for storage. I turned onto Oakland and cruised down the street, peering out at the mess behind the factory. Storage, and tetanus farming, apparently. The back lots were crammed full of rows of rusting metal racks and the remains of wooden crates and pallets stacked up twenty feet or more. Weeds and trash-choked alleys ran between the gigantic stacks, separating the back lots into a maze of industrial scrap. Nice.

“We’re supposed to find something in that?” I parked my car along the side of the street, shifting to look at Irish.

Irish was staring out the window, a slight frown on his face. At my question, he turned to face me, frown still in place. “Aye, bitch’ve a thing, isn’t it? We should split up.” He got out of the car, sword in hand. “Maybe you should wait here, with the car, until I’ve got them all. Then you can come and see what we’re dealing with.”

The area around the plant was an even mix of light industrial parks and subdivision blocks of houses, many of them abandoned. Most of the street lamps were out, two of them even leaning over the street just waiting for the next good storm or drunk driver to knock them down. Add in the rain, and visibility was crap. If I stayed with Irish, I’d have to keep the shadow penned up inside my own five senses, and both she and I hated that idea like fire. I was too used to relying on her plethora of extra input. Following Irish through that mess would mean working half-blind.

“Sounds like a plan to me,” I agreed. I got out of the car, too, and drew my gun. I checked the load and safety, the gun making that familiar and comfortingly threatening clicky-clack noise. I smiled innocently at Irish while he glowered back. I was never good at innocent.

Irish looked over his shoulder, farther down the street, and grunted in resignation. He pointed at the fifteen-foot tall, sagging, rusting chain link fence along the back of the lot, topped by a foot of razor wire. “Head down that way, the way we came from, and you’ll find where I went in last time. I’ll head up this way.” He gestured up the street with that ridiculous sword of his. “If you find ‘em, come get me, and I’ll take care of the killing.”

I opened my mouth to snip something to the effect of not needing him to kill a few measly dog-things, then shut it tight before my temper could get away from me. I reminded myself that I wasn’t interested in started a pissing contest with the man, and that I didn’t really want him to think of me as dangerous.

“Coming to get you is a waste of time,” I said, because it was beyond my ability not to argue about something. “I have a flare.”

“Sure, and they’ll know right where ye are when you fire it off.” Irish cast a look heavenwards, as though asking for patience. He did that a lot, at least around me. “Just come get me, Alice.”

I put my eyebrows up and gave him a steady look. “I hope you don’t think I’m talking about a regular flare gun.”

“Odd, I was hoping ye were,” Irish muttered. “Yer gonna do whatever you want, I get that. Just try not to get hurt, and don’t wander too far. I’ll want to talk to you about this outsider when I’m done with the cleanup.”

“Outlander.”

“What?”

“Outlander.” I smiled, fixing my face into a parody of sweetness and helpfulness.

“Alice …” Irish rubbed the spot between his eyebrows, like he had a headache coming on, and my smile got a little more genuine. Then he straightened and spun to stare down the dark street. “I need to go,” and just like that he turned and stalked off down the street.

“What, that’s it?”

“That’s it,” he called back, breaking into a jog.

The rain sputtered to a stop, and he was soon gone, just the sounds of his feet splashing in icy puddles echoing back to me. I stared, frowning, down the dark street for a long second or two. I mean, sure, I’d planned to ditch him, but this felt like I’d been sent to sit at the kiddie table.

I turned to the car and slapped the rear fender, hard. The Barracuda growled, peeling out and taking off down the street. I’d designed it as a theft deterrent. It’ll drive around randomly for a half hour or so, and then come back here.

That, and I got a kick out of the ‘yah, mule!’ thing.

“Shit!” I flicked my cigarette away and glared after the car. I’d left the damn thermos of coffee in there.

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