My attention shifted to the shadow’s perceptions, and her tactile map. It was like going blind, but having my sense of touch extended impossibly far. In the next aisle, I felt debris come flying through the rack as it was hit by the one just beyond it. Coils of rusty barbed wire, old tool boxes, lengths of steel rebar and nail-studded lumber from broken-down pallets filled the air like grenade shrapnel. That rack shuddered and split, and began falling toward the one on my right but I was already moving. I leapt over the still-twitching burning remains of that scrapyard dog and hauled ass. I’m tall, and I’ve got long legs, and when I have to I can really, really move.
But it was thirty-four feet to the end of my aisle, and that was choked with clutter. I vaulted over the rusted hulk of an abandoned riding lawn mower and ducked under a protruding axle. I felt the neighboring rack falling, and my shadow and I started multitasking. She calculated where I would likely be when the racks collided, and inventoried the scrap that would likely be thrown into my row. She calculated trajectories based on likely masses and looked for an open route. She plotted out a hundred different plans, everything from ‘duck and cover’ to ‘stop running and start digging.’ She’s very good at multitasking, my shadow is.
Impact. I ducked the stack of flying pallets and leapt backwards to avoid a falling crate. The noise was incredible, as debris crashed and metal screamed and buckled. I leaned to one side as a support spar broke nearby, sending an old rivet whistling past my ear.
The shadow calculated and I moved, with no hesitation or thought. In times like this we really were one being, and I hated it. I hated blurring the line separating her from me, but I hated the idea of dying a little more.
The neighboring rack and tons of scrap hit the ground, and I avoided the worst of the tremor by leaping. I came down on top of the crate that had nearly flattened me, still twenty feet from the end of the row. The chaos was like a drug to the shadow, and she wallowed in every vibration, every sound and movement. My terror and her bliss came together into a crazed determination and if anyone had been there to see us… Well, they would have been skewered and squished, but if they were very lucky they might have seen a tall lanky redheaded ninja dodging and leaping and now climbing up the side of the storage rack in utter silence, a smile on her face and terror in her eyes.
A cloud of dust swallowed me as I climbed higher. I closed my eyes and kept going. I hacked and coughed and choked on it, and knew by the taste of it that most of the cloud was rust particles and mold from the storage racks. Too damp for actual dust, of course.
My rack was moving faster now, and I coiled, waiting for the perfect moment. Blind and deaf, I was moving strictly by shadowsense. I noticed that my hands hurt, but disregarded it. Now! I thought, and leapt just before the frame slammed into the next rack in the line. I came down on top of it, gripping a plastic-wrapped coil of cable with an empty bird nest in the middle and a rusted slat of iron framework. I shifted my balance as the supports buckled and my footing pitched and yawed, and tried to breathe through my jacket. I leapt again before this rack hit the next, landing on another shuddering and shaking framework.
It fell, too, and I leapt again. And again. I lost count of how many times, but I felt the shadow making a note of it in case I asked later. The shadow found a soft spot up ahead, and I followed her lead, moving back toward the center of the row along a series of falling platforms.
My hands were bleeding from the sharp handholds, and my ears were ringing from the cacophony. My heart was pounding so hard it hurt, and I was shaking like a leaf from the adrenaline, but I kept moving. My boots and their handy enchantment lent solid footing, even when I leapt and landed on an icy patch, and my hands seized any handhold that felt solid enough to support me, regardless of how sharp it was. Eventually, we reached the last rack, and I followed my shadow’s hastily-calculated route as best I could. There was a convertible parked here, near the old factory itself. It was just clear of the last falling rack, and I tucked and rolled in midair and came down on the ragtop – and right through it. The impact was bone-jarring, but it wasn’t bone-breaking, so all right. In the back of my mind, the shadow was gibbering in glee, and I had the impression that she wanted us to do it again.
I lay there for a minute or two, wrapped in damp vinyl and caked with dirt and rust, and just gasped and coughed and shook until I could compose myself. “Holy shit,” I finally rasped.
“That was awesome! Where’d you learn to do that?” It was a man’s voice, coming from somewhere above me. “I’m not even mad about my car, that’s how awesome that was! Hey, are you okay?” The voice was familiar, and at first I thought it was Pardell. But no, I wasn’t that lucky, and my life wasn’t that simple.
I wiped at my face, clearing most of the grit and pawed at the ragtop until I had a clear view. The dust was settling, swirling in little eddies as I clambered free of my entanglement. I was dimly aware that everything hurt, particularly my hands; but a blessed cold numbness was spreading through my body as my shadow did what she could for me. The blood was freezing on my skin, crystals of ice blooming along the ragged edges of the most serious injuries. Looking up, I saw a paunchy, balding, middle aged man pinned to the brick wall of the factory by clusters of rebar. He was pinned there, two or three stories off the ground.
“Benny?” I wheezed. “Is that you?”
“More or less, yeah. Funny meeting you here. Should I warn you about the dogs?” He was more or less sideways up there, and where he wasn’t skewered his limbs were hanging oddly, as though half the bones in his body were broken.
Benny isn’t a friend of mine, but he is someone I know. Benito deAngelo is an accountant for a small but feisty family of old-fashioned organized crime mobsters. His grandmother runs the family, really ruthlessly and really efficiently. Nobody does bloodthirsty quite as well as a vampire does, and Gianna deAngelo has a flair for it that most vampires can only envy. I’m on her payroll as a consultant, with the same kind of arrangement that Irish and I have. Only instead of casually agreeing not to kill me just yet, Gianna actually pays me.
I carefully climbed out of Benny’s classic Pontiac. It was a huge boat of a car, cherry red and with actual fins on the back. And it had a huge, soft back seat for which I was greatly appreciative.
“No, Benny, I already met those. They’re what brought me here.”
He gestured toward the half-mile of destroyed scrap behind me. “Overkill, much?” I laughed, and nearly gagged as my shadow snuffed another creature. She was still in the rubble, exploring every crevasse and burrow, seeking out any survivors. God, they tasted foul. When I brought my hand up to cover my mouth, I saw my sleeve flapping loosely. Investigating, I found a long gash from the base of my thumb going most of the way to my elbow. Crimson ice had stopped the bleeding, but it was ragged and open and I could see muscle in there.
I pulled my medkit out of my inner jacket pocket, a small white cigarette case with a caduceus I’d etched into the metal with acid. I unfolded it once, twice, three times, until the case was about the size of a laptop. I needed to see to this wound.
“That wasn’t me, Benny.” I looked up at him again, noticing that there was very little blood on the wall. He wasn’t leaking. He was pinned by three bars through his torso, one through his right bicep, one through his right ankle, and two lanced unpleasantly close to his groin. His dark suit was soaked in blood and as torn up as he was, and I could see the shaft of his thighbone poking out through his expensive slacks. “You look …” I paused, frowned, looking up and down, “… uh, really good, actually, all things considered.”
Benny managed to shrug with the shoulder that wasn’t pinned. The motion left his dangling left arm swaying unpleasantly. “Definitely been better.”
“How’d you get up there? Who did this to you? Somebody you came here to meet?”
“No.” He sighed. “It was… this monster. It was big, and naked. There were holes in his skin, and it was full of stuff.”
“Black goo? White slime with eyes?”
“Like those dogs? No, though they did come sniffing around later. Nah, this guy was full of garbage. Like, cinderblocks and rebar. Broken glass. I was meeting someone here, and that thing came up behind me and hit me. It spiked me like a fuckin’ football in the endzone. When I woke up, it had pinned me up here. I didn’t see what it did to the other guy, but I could hear it happening. It sounded…” He closed his eyes. “It sounded bad.”
The shadow chimed in, having found somebody. Most of somebody, anyway. There was no head, and one shoulder and arm were missing. The rest of the body had been mauled, probably by the dogs.
“There’s a body over there,” I said, pointing. “Not as lively as you are. Dogs got to him.”
“Not sure lively’s the word for it, kiddo. Can you get me dow-” His words were cut off in a ragged, bubbling, gurgling noise, and he turned his head and spat a gob of chunky looking blood. “Damn it. Third time with that. Is that a death rattle, you think?”
“I …” was at a loss for words. “Give me a minute.”
I took a seat on the vast hood of Benny’s car, and readied a few supplies. When I was ready, I slammed my arm against the fender, breaking the ice. Blood flowed, sluggishly, but it didn’t hurt. My shadow had thoroughly numbed me with the kind of cold that goes deeper than bone. I sluiced the cut and my hands as clean as I could with alcohol and gauze pads.
Once that was done, I opened a jar that contained a big black spider with a ruby implanted in its abdomen and tapped the gemstone, activating it. As I pulled the wound closed, it set to work with fangs and spinnerets. Where it bit, tiny brass staples held the tissue together, and the silk produced a sterile dressing that held as well as glue. When it was finished, it had wasted away to little more than a dry husk that twitched weakly. I crushed it in my other hand, and stashed it back in the jar. The ruby I could reuse, once I caught another good spider.
I applied a bandage over the spider-dressing. Jada, one of the other magicians in Detroit, was a healer, and I’d bartered with her to infuse some bandages with recuperative magic. It wasn’t as good as if Jada were here in person, but it was a lot better than letting nature take its course. I’d be good as new in a few hours, maybe a day if it was really deep. Might not even scar. She’s that good.
“Alice?” Benny called, seeing me put away the kit. “Little help, here?”
“Uh, Benny? I can’t help but notice you’re still not dying.” I lit a cigarette and stared up at him, thoughtful. Ordinarily, I’d go ahead and get Benny down, tidy him up, and send him back to his grandmother. It’s a billable expense. The tricky part is, ordinarily, Benny wouldn’t be undead. Or turning undead. Or however it worked. I’m a bit shaky on the particulars.
I suppose I could stake him first. Stakes don’t kill vampires. Not much does. A stake will usually hold them still for awhile, though, and it would make Benny safer to handle.
Also, I had a demon slayer running loose in the yard somewhere, and even though Irish seemed willing to put up with me, I sincerely doubted he’d extend that courtesy to Benny.
And there was the part where the local vamps weren’t supposed to be making any new vampires. It’s a rule. And with Benny, here, somebody had broken that rule. Okay, let’s be honest, it was almost certainly Gianna that had vamped him. That meant A) Gianna had been breaking rules made by people who were just as serious about those things as the Major Arcana was about their rules, and B) I was currently the only living witness to Mama deAngelo’s rule-breaking.
“Doesn’t feel that way!” he griped as I stared up at him, considering the consequences. “Fuck, it hurts. I hate to bitch, but damn. Can you please get me down?”
I hopped off the hood of the car and crossed my arms. “Yeah, no. Alice is off tonight’s menu, Benny.” No way in hell would I haul him down from up there; baby vampires were not to be trusted, and I wasn’t getting within biting distance for all the tea in China. Last thing I needed tonight was Benny deAngelo gnawing on me.
“Oh, come on, Alice. You know how it works. I won’t be bitey until tomorrow night.” He managed a frown. “I think. Right? I have to do the undead coma thing, first, right?”
“I… honestly don’t know, Benny.” I scratched my head. I didn’t know much about vampires. I knew Gianna, but I’d never discussed the details, and the literature is contradictory, at best. And by that, I mean the scholarly literature, not the Bram Stoker, Anne Rice stuff. “What the hell are you even doing here? In this yard, tonight?”
“Could ask you the same thing,” he said, amiable. At my sharp glance, he managed another of those shrugs. “Business. For Mama.”
“Who’s the other guy?” I gestured off to the right, sending my shadow winding through the debris back to the corpse of Benny’s rendezvous buddy. Well, what there was of it, at any rate. We didn’t recognize that one. Wasn’t a lot to work with.
Benny got a cagey look in his dulling eyes. “Just a guy.”
I narrowed my eyes, and looked toward the mess. The dogs had torn up the body pretty well, but his clothes were still more or less attached to what was left. The shadow settled over the remains, searching. We’d just done this trick with Leo earlier, so it wasn’t too strenuous to get her to do it again. As she searched, I tried without success to ignore the smells and tastes and textures that filled my mind. We tasted blood and bone, aftershave and urine both human and canine. Searching for his effects, she found a shattered Rolex watch, and a crucifix necklace. Oh, and a Prince Albert, as if I needed to know that. There was gunpowder residue on the fingers and pinky ring on his hand. Somebody had been shooting, for all the good it had done him. I tasted and felt supple leather, with an aroma of cash and ass-sweat – we’d found the wallet. In seconds, I felt a name in raised plastic letters on eight different cards.
“Just a guy named Devon Brant.” I looked back up at Benny, whose face had gone noticeably paler. “Magic, Benny. What, did you think I was just a con artist phoney psychic fleecing Mama deAngelo?”
“Yeah, actually.” He shrugged again. “That’s exactly what I thought. Ballsy, but not real bright. Glad to see I was wrong. Now, if you look that way about twenty yards, there’s a broken bit of shelving that you could use like a ladder. Just bring it…”
“Why do I know that name? Brant, Brant…”
“No reason. He’s nobody.”
“Your grandmother’s warned you about how flammable vampires are, right?” I held up my Zippo, tipping it carefully to one side. A stream of golden fire poured out, sizzling and burning beside my boot. I snapped the lighter closed, and stood there, blowing a smoke ring up at him while underlit by the sputtering puddle of napalm.
Impressive, right? Yeah, well it was supposed to work like a flamethrower. Never did get it do more than trickle, though. That’s artificing for you. But Benny didn’t have to know that, did he?
He had the nerve to grin at me. “Aw, c’mon, sweetie. You wouldn’t do that.” It was usually quite the handsome grin; despite his receding hairline he had a strong face and beautiful big dark eyes. Both those eyes were blackened though, and swelling closed, and that didn’t help the effect much. His whole face was as battered and bruised as I felt. Also, a couple of his teeth were missing, so the practiced politician’s smile wasn’t quite up to par. Wait, politician! That was it!
“Deputy Mayor of Detroit Devon Brant? That’s his body over there?” Quite suddenly, the claims in the Free Press about the organized crime connections to the Mayor’s office began to look more believable.
“No, Alice. It’s the Devon Brant who sells Hickory Farms sausages in that little kiosk in the mall every Christmas. I love me some smoked cheddar, and we were meeting here because I don’t want to wait until the Holiday season.” He rolled his eyes, and I could see the dull red gleam flickering there, winking in and out like a firefly.
My snappy comeback was preempted by a coughing jag that bent me over, hands braced on my knees. I retched, and hawked up a small lozenge-shaped lump of grit and rust and dirt. The shadow had finished gathering all the crap I’d managed to inhale from inside my lungs. When I’d finished coughing, I looked back up at Benny, who was smiling down at me.
“Fine,” I growled. “Not important anyway. Do you know how much trouble you’re in? How much trouble your Mama is in?”
“What are you talking about?”
My turn to roll my eyes. “Benny, you’re toast. You know Mama deAngelo isn’t supposed to be making any newbies, right?”
“Huh?” Benny managed a bit of a frown, craning his head to look at me.
“Jesus. Has Gianna told you anything? There’s rules, man. Making baby vamps is strictly forbidden.”
“By who?” Benny demanded, wriggling a little on the spikes to get a better look at me. His broken left arm went back to swaying, and his ruby pinky ring caught the firelight. I eased back some, just in case he wasn’t pinned as well as I thought he was.
“You don’t even know that?” I shook my head. This was going to get really unpleasant, I just knew it. “There’s a guy in charge of bloodsuckers in Detroit – they call him the Eldest. And his rule is, you all don’t make noobs, okay? That’s been the rule for, I don’t know, seventy years? A long time, anyway.”
“There’s other vampires in Detroit?”
“Fuck.” I spat the word out, rubbing my face. “I’m sure your mother will explain –” A short burst of gunfire in the distance cut me off, and I pushed myself up on my tip-toes, trying to see over the wreckage. “What’s going on over there?”
“Two people, shooting at each other. I can’t see all the action, but I’m pretty sure the big guy’s hit the other one once or twice. Doesn’t seem to be bothering ‘em much, though. And there’s another guy, off to one side. He’s… what’s that?”
“What’s what? I can’t see from down here.”
“Yeah, you can. Look up.”
Table of Contents / Chapter Eight >>
Black Alice by Marci Sischo and James Agle is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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