I hung up on Honey and shoved the phone in my pocket, opening the door and standing up out of the car. The meteorite, or whatever it was, had hit a car less than a hundred feet back. The car was totaled, and on fire, but the alarm was blaring away dutifully. I cast another look down the road, to see if my followers were coming back, but the coast looked to be clear. With a sharp whistle and a firm pointing gesture, I peeled my shadow off the Barracuda and sent it flitting toward the fire to investigate. She billowed as she slithered and flew, and the few streetlights on the residential road seemed to flicker and dim as she permeated the block.
I sighed. I really should get back in my car and get myself home. I had enough to deal with without adding fireballs to the list. I scanned the houses, but couldn’t figure where the whatever-it-was came from. In fact, even with the firelight and the car alarm blaring away, no lights were coming on anywhere on the street. That seemed odd. This was a nicer neighborhood, not the kind of place where people determinedly ignored this kind of noise outside after dark.
Through the shadow’s touch, I suddenly became aware of something moving in the wreckage. She squealed with hungry glee, as something unfolded, struggling in the cage of twisted metal and flames that had once been a minivan. She lunged, wanting to attack her prey while it was helpless, but I held her back. Barely. The effort made me lean against the car while sweat beaded on my forehead. No! Bad shadow! We’re too open here, too visible!
She brought me the godawful flavor of the creature, similar to the dogs and just as bad, but slightly different. Slightly… off. This was another corruption. It had the same sickening taste as the junkyard dogs. The same otherworldy flavor. I slammed the door shut and drew the Baby Eagle, striding down the center line of the road toward the burning minivan. I heaved a big, tired sigh. Of course, I would manage to drive into another outlander outbreak.
Actually, considering I hadn’t been paying a lot of attention to where I was driving, it made a kind of sense. Between the distraction of bartering with Honey on the phone and watching my mysterious tail, conditions had been perfect for the shadow to slither into my thoughts and direct me somewhere. Maybe she’d caught a whiff of the creature’s scent, or something.
The shadow chose to ignore my thoughts. If she could, she’d be whistling innocently and looking the other way. Stunts like this were what kept me from sleeping at night. This is what she manages when I’m awake. Who knew what she’d get up to while I was asleep?
The creature was rocking the burning van, and screaming in a metallic, ear-piercing shrill that almost drowned out the alarm. And still, no lights. No stirring of concerned civilians. Despite all the racket, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was quiet. Too quiet. The shadow wrestled against my restraint, all but frothing at the mouth she didn’t actually have with rage, and I felt my lips curl back, exposing my teeth. The gun was shaking in my hand and my heart was pounding in my chest like thunder. Her hatred was immense, and the overflow wasn’t helping me focus. I was pretty pissed, myself – at her.
I snarled, a wordless guttural sound, and waved my hand toward the houses where the fireball had to have come from. Godsdammit, shadow, make yourself useful! Go see where that came from! She refused, violently. For a moment, I was so wracked with pain I nearly keeled over and my vision went dark.
When I could see again, I saw some long, tall spindly thing stand up out of the caved-in roof of the car, maybe twenty feet away from where I was standing. It forced the bent metal frame aside, and three incredibly long, thin legs struck out, finding purchase on the pavement as the thing lifted itself up. A fourth leg dangled, broken and useless off its, well, rear end, I guess. The way it moved made me think of a huge insect. Was it some kind of giant spider? I rubbed my eyes. The flames against the dark made it hard to see, and my shadow was too enraged to provide a more useful view. The spider thing teetered, and gave itself a good shake.
The flames along its back and forelimbs went out. Damn, and fire had worked so well on the Cur-rurptions. It skittered forward a few steps, moving with a grace and speed that shouldn’t have been possible for a tripod. Then, it noticed me, and looked my way.
Most of her hair had burned, and the flesh was warped and stretched over a huge, distended jaw full of jagged sharp teeth. But she was still wearing a pair of pearl earrings, and her lips, pierced in a few places by the sudden growth of those horrible teeth, were still painted a frosty pink. Her skull was flattened lengthwise, and she had to tilt her head to one side to allow one of her eyes to get a clear look at me – her beautiful brown eyes, that were wide with horror and pain and fear. She screamed again, the sound like fingernails on slate.
I stopped cold on the sidewalk. Wait, the hollowman was Corrupting humans? That was… really, really bad.
The Corruption danced back, away from me, and then darted off to the side, over the sidewalk and toward a nice two-story brownstone with a swing dangling from a big maple in the front yard. I tried to draw a bead on her, but shit, she was fast. When it was about halfway across the yard, the air shuddered and rippled and seemed to swallow it, her, whole.
What the hell? I jogged over to where it had disappeared, my shadow already flitting ahead to sniff out the trail. It fanned out, and we tasted lawn fertilizer and nightcrawlers and slightly acidic rainwater… and a gentle tingle of magic that I recognized. Magic we had tasted before. That was an enchantment, and I knew who it belonged to. Grace Perry, the Knight of Wands.
I spat swears through my teeth. Now what? Okay, if I was smart, I’d get out of here. But if the problem was so widespread that I’d managed to blunder into it twice in one night, and the hollowman so strong it was corrupting humans beings…
The shadow purred and cooed, trying another tact to urge me onward. I eased up onto the lawn, trying to feel out the enchantment. It was strong, fuzzing the edges of my vision as I squinted and tried to push past it.
It was a ward. I was seeing a quiet dark house, with a faded but tidy flowerbed under the picture window and a two-car garage, but who knew what was really there? The ward painted a picture and told my mind what to see, and was trying to prevent me from even thinking about crossing this line. Grace’s wards weren’t physical things, they were constructs of emotion and thought and ideas. If I wanted to, I could push right through this thing, but then I’d have to explain how I’d managed it.
Enchanters affected minds, and my human mind was just exactly the sort that fell for that kind of thing. Fortunately, I had another mind in residence, decidedly not human. My shadow could feel heat up ahead, and could taste smoke. Squinting, I could make out flickering orange light, overlaying my view of the house. She heard gunshots, and I heard the echoes along with her. That was enough. The enchantment wavered and gave up on me.
The house was on fire. I was facing a neat little two-story brownstone with flames billowing out two side windows and crawling up the side of the building. The front door had been blown in, taking much of the frame and wall with it, and the pretty picture window and much of that wall had been blown out, debris flattening the tidy flower bed and scattered over the lawn. Damage like that told me the Knight of Swords, Tyler Grant, was here too. Unlike Grace, Tyler’s magic was very, very physical.
No sign of the spiderthing bugwoman. Had it gone back indoors?
I trotted up to the front door. Smoke rolled out towards the porch, and I could hear shouting and crashing noises coming from the deeper inside the house. The foyer was quite nice, but for the brickwork and shattered door that had blown inside.
The room was enormous, one huge open living space with a full kitchen off to my left somewhat separated from the rest of the room by a large countertop island, with a built-in wine rack that reached all the way up to the vaulted ceiling. There were areas of plush carpeting, isolated by furniture or bookshelves. The lower shelves sported toys and children’s books. A living area was directly in front of me, somewhat recessed and centered around a circular fireplace with a burnished copper chimney dangling above it. Beyond that, a pair of open French doors looked out on a patio, and I could make out one edge of a swimming pool in the back yard. There was a tricycle parked outside, next to a wicker patio set. Everything looked tasteful, but not pretentious.
I’d expected something nice, in this neighborhood. But this wasn’t just money. It was homey and comfortable, like really nice people lived here. It spoke of family and home and other concepts that always made me feel like I didn’t really belong. It reminded me that I was just pretending to be human. I didn’t see anyone around. My shadow pulled in close to me, hunkering down near my feet. She was coiling, preparing to strike.
I eased myself further into the room, trying to gauge where the sounds of the fight had come from. I stepped on something soft, and came very close to shooting the ever-loving-shit out of a stuffed bear. It was missing one of its plastic eyes and one of the ears was all wet. I knelt down and touched it, a little surprised when it wasn’t blood. Just spit.
Somewhere around here was a child. A kid, who loved a little cyclopean teddy bear and chewed on its ear. The stairway was off to my right, and the fire was picking up momentum upstairs. I was just debating whether I should go up, when I heard a scream from the back yard – that horrible metallic shriek again. “Grace, no!” I heard, Tyler’s deep voice. “Get down!”
I had time to sidestep, craning for a view of what was happening outside, when the wall to the right of the French doors suddenly exploded toward me. Something the size of a horse came through the wall, smashing into the copper chimney and crashing down to the floor. I made out three impossibly long legs, and a keening whine. Debris from the shattered wall ricocheted off my shield, and I ignored it as I stepped forward and drew a bead on the poor creature. I didn’t get the shot off, though. A wind came up out of nowhere.
Well, I say wind, but it sounded like a locomotive, and it hit the side of the building like one, too. The French doors blew into the living room, along with half the broken wall. Broken glass and furniture, bricks and wood were suddenly everywhere. The wind tore around the room like a tornado, and an armchair clipped the edge of my shield, making me stagger as the shield belt drew on my personal energy to repel the blow. I threw myself prone as Hurricane Tyler tore the huge living room and kitchen to shreds. Looking up, I saw the bugwoman Corruption being buffeted against walls and hammered by the stormborne rubble. She was sobbing, and desperately lashing out at the walls.
It didn’t last long. A minute, maybe, or a little more. Felt like forever, though. When the wind died, the creature and I climbed to our feet at the same time. It had landed in the kitchen, just beyond the counter island.
Tears were running down its face, smearing mascara down that misshapen, tanned face, and it just kept standing up, and up, and up. Its skin was stretched taut over elongated and grotesque bones. When it turned to face me, it moved on all three of her remaining limbs, each of which came to a point in a long, tapered claw of dull bone. Boneless fingers with French manicures dangled around the place the bony talons had erupted from its palms. It towered over me, easily ten feet tall and still I’d have guessed it to weigh about what I did. Tattered bits of clothing hung off its frame, much of them singed and still smoking. They were pink, and I guessed they had been silk pajamas not too long ago. The Corruption was burned and cut, bleeding and battered, and judging by the look in those wide eyes it was also completely out of its mind.
I thought that was probably a mercy. It skitter-stepped over the countertop, hissing at me. Its mouth gaped open a good eighteen inches, with stalactite teeth crawling with rotten slime and small, maggoty-looking grubs. A warty black tongue stabbed toward me, and it lunged.
I squeezed off two shots at her and leaped away, covering my head and squeezing my eyes shut.
The explosions shook the building, accompanied by a reptilian Godzilla roar that made my bones resonate and my mammal hindbrain whimper and cringe. I make my Dragon’s Breath ammo with real dragon’s breath – it’s as expensive as all hell to get these days, but when you absolutely, positively have to blow a giant fucking hole in something, there’s nothing better. I opened my eyes as the last of the acid-green fireballs subsided, and climbed to my feet, looking around to see Tyler standing on the terrace and staring at me, both hands full of green fire.
“Alice?” he said, and looked at the fire in his hands like he expected it to do something crazy, like turn into butterflies or something. I was a little impressed. Rather than dodge the blast, Tyler had actually caught it. “Shit! Alice Frye? What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Sorry,” I said, waving at him. “Am I supposed to call them first, like in baseball?”
Just then the Corruption fell to the floor between us, falling from the ceiling. Its chest was blown wide open, internal organs blackened and burned, ribs dancing with little licks of green fire. The thing’s back half was missing entirely, as I’d aimed the second shot a little lower and had blown it in two. Tyler flipped his dreadlocks out his eyes, staring at the thing with a look of disbelief. He’s a stocky black man, only around five six or so, but built like a cement truck. He had a cut on his forehead, and blood was running down his face, and some kind of white slime was coating one sleeve of his black leather jacket.
My grin faded as it coughed, and rolled over onto her stomach in a quick heave. Tyler spat, and hurled the concentrated ball of dragonflame at her, where it actually splashed off the damn thing’s gnarled back. And that was a really bad sign. It meant the same tricks didn’t work twice on her. I ejected the clip, and fished around for something else.
It rose up off the ground, standing on its motherfucking ribs. They were stretching, growing, joints forming here and there apparently at random, as no two seemed to be the same length or have the same number of… I don’t know. Knees, I guess. More of them popped out of its abdomen, and a mass of intestines spilled out of the stump, stretching out like a collection of tentacles.
Awesome. More tentacles.
It spun, and lashed out at me even as I was slamming home a new clip. The impact caught me in my left side, and plowed clean through my shield like it wasn’t even there. I hit the wall, and felt my ribs break just before the wall did. I landed on my back in the front lawn, in a pile of drywall dust and brick rubble. I coughed, bringing up a bubble of blood, and laughed a little, weakly, as I gasped for air and felt around for my gun. Okay, this might be interesting. It could hit. I wondered if I were crazy, or if was just the shadow’s love of battle spilling over. I suppose it hardly mattered.
My shadow hissed at the pain of my injury, and, since she really hates pain, she collected herself into my body and set about doing something to stop the hurting. Intense, soothing cold bloomed in my side, numbing the pain, and I could feel splinters of bone slowly shifting as she began nudging things back into place. She wasn’t good at moving things, but internal things? Part of us? That was easier.
I found the gun, and flopped over onto my back. It was still hard to breathe, but the pain had all but vanished. The shadow growled at me to be still, but the distended toothy face of the Corruption was way too close. It was trying to work itself through the hole in the wall and come after me, but those long spindly arms were getting in the way.
Abruptly, I felt a wave of vertigo, and as I shifted on the pile of bricks, dust and particles began drifting up around me. For that matter, I started to drift up, rising off the ground a few inches. It lasted only a moment – long enough for it to draw back and aim one of those not-hands at me. It was poised, ready to spear me like a fish, when the dust and I fell and the Corruption slammed down, catching its jaw on the edge of the hole and tearing it entirely off as it widened the opening in the wall all the way to the floor. I could see Tyler standing above it, muttering to himself and drawing back his fist for another strike.
Tyler’s an evocator; I might have mentioned that before. Where I can draw magic and build it into patterns inside objects, creating spell-like effects, Tyler draws in magic from the city around us, and converts it into fire or lightning. I’ve seen him stop a bullet in midair by taking away all the kinetic force it carries. Or, apparently, he can gather up an assload of gravity and add it to his punches.
Good to know. I hadn’t known about that trick either, until I’d just seen it.
I climbed to my feet, and approached the opening, carefully. The creature was a mess. It looked like when he’d brought his fist down, he’d broken every bone in its body. It was a pulpy smear, with bone fragments piercing its skin. He’d knocked it clean through the floor and the crawlspace, and splattered most of it into jelly in the process. I looked up at him, and breathed “Shit,” returning his complement from earlier. ”How much weight did you hit it with?”
He wiped a smear of blood off his face, and I realized his nose was bleeding. “All of it,” he said. The nosebleed was a worrying symptom. He may have overextended himself on that stunt. Mages can channel a lot of power, but there is a limit for each of us. Overdo, and things get unpleasant. Burning out isn’t a concern for me, since artificers are more about time invested than effort.
“You okay?” I asked. Tyler looked tired. He was a little younger than me, which put him around thirty. The dreads made him look a little younger, and he dressed even younger yet. He had a red tanktop on under his jacket, and baggy jeans that looked like they were about to fall off. He smiled and shrugged, his tough-guy gangsta machismo melting away and making him look about sixteen years old again.
“I’m good enough. I’ve got to be. That’s the job, right?” Tyler was an Arcana lifer, unlike me. I’d joined up about ten years ago, shortly before I’d moved to Detroit. He’d been raised in the organization, plucked out of an orphanage and apprenticed as a toddler. Evocators were rare, and he’d been raised to be a Knight. He took his duties very seriously.
“Is that all of them, do you think?”
Tyler nodded. “Yeah, I think so. There was another one, I think it used to be the family cat. It ate the little boy. There’s another corpse upstairs. Got no idea what happened to him, but it was nothin’ good.” He looked me up and down. ”How’s your side? Your head? You took a good hit there.”
“My ribs are sore,” I lied. ”But my head’s okay. My shield took most of the hit. I’ll be bruised, but I’ll be fine.” That much was true. Thanks to my meal earlier, good old Leo Deacon the would-be-mugger, I was already healing. The shadow could keep my injuries numbed, and hold the bones in place while they knit. That could take days or weeks, but the process would go a lot faster if I fed again. Tyler was looking at me thoughtfully. I didn’t like that. What did regular people do in these situations? Small talk? “Do you Knights have this much fun all the time?”
Tyler picked up a curtain off the floor, and wiped at the muck on his sleeve. The slime was sticky, and the curtain smoked ominously when it came into contact with it. His jacket was fine, though. It should be. I’d made it myself, and it would take a whole lot more than acidic monster-snot to get through that armor. ”What are you even doing here, Alice?” he asked, glaring at me.
“Passing through,” I opened my fresh pack of smokes and pulled one out. “Saw Spider-woman there smash a car out front when you blew her through the front wall. I thought I might take a peek and see what was going on. Where’s Grace? That’s her enchantment, right?”
“Yeah, she’s outside.” He waved toward the terrace, and wandered over toward the burning staircase. As he approached, the flames sputtered and died. Without a word, he headed upstairs. Huh. Had he believed a word of that? I could never tell with him. It’s that jaded tough-guy thing he does, I think.
I walked outside, where I found a lovely walled-in back yard. Half a gazebo was floating in the pool, and Grace was sitting in the other half.
Grace reminded me of what this house must have been like before it turned into a combat zone. She was refined, and sophisticated, and beautiful, and she did it effortlessly. She made me uncomfortable in the same way the home had, too. I was not the kind of woman Grace was. I didn’t fit in with her type, and I never would. I circled around the pool, watching her as I approached. She’s a willowy little thing, maybe a buck-ten soaking wet, with flawless skin and long, naturally curly black hair. She was wearing a blue shell top, soaked in blood from a gash down her shoulder, and a pair of elegantly sexy black panties. I saw a puddle of black fabric floating in the pool. When I got close enough, I took notice of her legs. They were long and pale and smooth and speckled here and there with bleeding circular wounds. Her perfect rosebud mouth was set in a grim frown as she dug a wriggling white leech-looking thing out of one of the wounds and flicked it into the pool.
“Hi, Alice,” she called, not looking up as she started digging into another hole in her thigh. “Funny to see you here.” She looked up at me, over the top of her glasses. “I don’t suppose you have some tweezers?”
“What the hell?” I asked, realizing that there were dozens of the little white leeches floating on the surface of the water. ”Are those…?”
“The woman,” she answered. “She vomited worms. I dodged, but a lot of them got on my skirt, and they ate through it and started in on me.”
I turned on my heel and sprinted back into the house, heart plunging for my shoes. Not again. Not another dead Knight. And with me at both scenes? Fuck, fuck, fuck!
“Tyler!” I screamed. ”Get your ass out here, now! Hurry!”
Table of Contents / Chapter Sixteen >>
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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(Image: house on fire, shadow. As always, if it’s yours, and you want credit, or don’t want it used, let me know, and I’ll fix it ASAP.)
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