“You wouldn’t believe the day I’m having,” I announced into the blackness. “Seriously, it’s been hell.”
Honey gasped “I’m blind!” and Irish grunted in surprise. Through the shadow, I could feel every single piece of airborne debris, every jag of glass and sliver of wood, the ashtrays, wall darts, bottles and glasses. A thousand little shards of death – well, eight hundred seventy-eight, according to the shadow – poised, swiveling towards the sound of my voice. I could feel the swirling eddies of air currents as my mystery stalker laughed in delight. I felt the vibrations of Honey’s slamming heart, tasted the sweat and fear on her skin. I could feel the humanoid nimbus of power that marked out the stranger’s position, which was way more impressive than it had been before.
I could taste my glass of whiskey in the stranger’s hand, and my cigarette, now tumbling through the air to the floor, forgotten. “Ah, there it is!” he actually clapped his hands in delight, sloshing whiskey around in the process. “Gimme!” Tendrils of power flowed out from him, dozens of them, reaching out into the darkness and branching into smaller and smaller filaments. He was actually trying to grab my shadow, I realized.
Yeah, I know. Try and scoop up a handful of dark sometime – you’ll be about as successful at it as he was. My shadow danced between thread-fine lines of power for a second or two, until she grew bored with the game. She latched onto the power then, and drank deep. The lines of power faded away into the dark, and the dark was still hungry.
“My car’s all fucked up, and I’m beat half to shit. I’ve got the fucking Order crawling up my ass, and a rampaging hollowman loose in my city thanks to you, asshole.” I ticked the points off on my fingers as I stepped over Honey, brushing past Gene. I could taste the aura of my magic clinging to him, animating his shell. “I’m up for grabs in a vampire street war, and ain’t that a great place to be? There’s a dead Knight and way too much evidence linking me to the scene and any minute now I expect they’ll be along to ask a few questions about that. And now you show up in my favorite bar, stealing my fucking drink, and my fucking cigarette, and swinging your dick around like you’re something fucking special.”
It felt good to feel the room all around me, like I’d been working with my eyes closed before. The shadow filled every inch of space in the room, except for a small bubble around Irish. Even now, she didn’t want to touch him. The inner surface of that bubble registered light, and I imagined Irish with a lit match, looking around at the wall of darkness that surrounded him.
I was going to have some ‘splaining to do when this was over.
My boots thudded over the hardwood floor as I walked around the end of the bar, and my shadow made the sound resonate and echo from everywhere. Mystery Man wasn’t smiling anymore. He stood stunned, staring at his hands. The debris, though, still tracked my movements, and I reached up and plucked a broken chair leg out of the air, not appreciating the way it was pointed at my eye.
I didn’t usually let the shadow eat much. She was easier to control when she was weak with hunger. The stranger’s magical shadow-net was more than I let her eat in a month, let alone one night, but I wasn’t in the mood to enforce her diet at the moment.
I told her what to look for, and immediately she located twenty-two geists floating in the ambient electromagnetic field. They felt like little knots of spite and anger, thrumming with potential magical energy.
“And stop pointing shit at me!” Sic ‘em, I thought, and the shadow lunged like a rabid dog let off the leash. The darkness coalesced around each of the pseudo-spirits, and my shadow tore into them like she was biting down on a juicy tomato. The bar echoed with the noise of eight-hundred-seventy-eight bits of junk clattering and tinkling and crashing to the floor. The geists tasted bitter and strong, like espresso laced with angst.
“How did you do that?” He spun in place as though he were looking for his vanished minions.
“Geists? Really?” I planted my hands on my hips as the mystery man spluttered and backpedaled. “Somebody didn’t do their homework. You might as well be tossing candy bars at me.”
The shadow swelled with her feeding, the dark miasma she cast thickening almost to a gel until she was layering every surface, an oily black murk sucking the light and heat out of the room, coating the very air. She lay against my skin, feeding back to me the taste of my own blood and dead and dying flesh, graveyard dirt on my clothes and gunpowder residue on my hands and hours’ worth of terrified sweat. I could feel Honey choking as she tried to breathe in the very darkness, and Gene, stolid and still in the dark. Irish’s bubble had moved; he was standing now, and I guessed he had a gun in hand from the shape of his stance.
And just eight feet in front of me, I could feel the stranger, suddenly wrapped up in a slick bubble of power that – for now – kept him safe from the shadow’s grasp. The shadow licked at the surface of that bubble, nibbling at it and savoring the taste.
“Okay, I admit it. That was impressive,” he said. “Did that thing just eat all my geists? Nice. Handy enough when you’re dealing with ghosts, but not terribly useful otherwise, is it? Still, it should serve my purposes. Once I kill you, I’m thinking it’ll be a lot easier to harness.”
“I don’t think you’re taking me seriously.” I crossed my arms.
“I’m not,” he said, and his aura of power suddenly clenched. The scent of burning meat filled the room, and I felt a rush of heat slam into me and my shadow wriggled with an eager, goading purr, as though she were saying make him do it again. It went so fast, it took me a moment to realize what had just happened – he’d called up fire, just like Tyler could do. A wall of flame and superheated air and by the time it reached me she had already eaten everything except a warm breeze. I laughed, not caring a bit that it made my ribs ache again. I’d never felt her this strong, and usually it would scare me. Not tonight, though.
“Oh. Oh, damn,” he said, backing toward the door. “Did it just –?”
“She does do a few more things than eat geists.” I grinned. Damn, but it was good to be back on the frightening side of an encounter. “You wanted her? Well, here she is.”
The darkness broke like a wave and the shadow howled silently, gleeful and drunk with freedom and hunger. The dim bar lights seemed incredibly bright when they reappeared as the darkness splashed off the walls and rolled up and over the stranger, diving on him. Somewhere behind me I heard Honey drag in a huge gasping breath, coughing.
His protective aura of power blazed hot, as my shadow bit and clawed at it, feeding deeply and seeking a toehold in that web of energy. Irish gasped, and I smiled over my shoulder at him. He was gaping open-mouthed at the roiling mass of black across the room, his .45 hanging almost forgotten in his two-handed grip. I winked at him, and I swear, he actually flinched.
The shadow tugged at my mind, calling for my attention, driving a trill of alarm down my spine. Not because she felt alarmed, but because she thought I should: a warning. The air tingled against my skin, the lights dimming and flickering. I extended my hands, trying to get a feel for what was happening. Even without the shadow, I was sensitive to the flow of power and magical energy. It’s kind of a prerequisite for being a magician. And just now, I felt the energy bend and flux, stretching tight like a piano wire. I caught my breath. What was that asshole doing?
A framework was coming into existence – a channel through which to funnel power. Rather than just throw fire at me, he was getting ready to hit me with everything he had. I sidestepped, and blinked in surprise when my shadow cast out a filament of darkness, nudging and shifting the semi-formed conduit of power so that it was again centered on me.
I had time to think at her – What are you doing?! – and a coiling nimbus of pale blue light branched through the room, arcing off metal and light fixtures like lightning.
Stop him! But the shadow wasn’t listening to me anymore. I knew the stranger didn’t have her – I was sure I’d have noticed that. Either way, I wasn’t the one giving orders anymore. I had a second for the horror and raw terror to hit home, and then I saw the stranger thrust his hands out through the bubble of darkness surrounding him, one gnarled, smoking hand seizing the end of the conduit.
“It’s been fun, Alice,” he said, and his voice was different, raspier, rougher. “For what it’s worth, I always kinda liked you.” He touched that ugly ruby ring of his to one end of the conduit, and I was blinded by the flash of light.
The clap of thunder was deafening, a split-second after the flare, and the shockwave broke every window and remaining piece of glass in the bar. I could hear Honey screaming, but it sounded like it was miles away. There was a sensation of vertigo and nausea, and even though I could feel the floor under my feet I also felt like I was falling, plummeting. I flailed my arms, trying to grab onto something stable, but there was nothing – and then I did fall, onto my knees, as what felt like a white-hot railroad spike slammed into the top of my head and shot right down my spine. I may have screamed.
It took me a second to figure out I wasn’t dead.
I opened one eye, wary. I was kneeling, fingers laced together over my head and clenched together hard enough to ache. My attacker stood a few feet away, naked and smoldering and burned to a charcoal crisp, eyes melted, noseless, lipless, and still gaping at me open-mouthed.
I stood up and approached him, drawing my gun. I was done playing, and it was time to shoot this motherfucker… I paused, standing there with my Colt pressed up against his chest.
I didn’t hurt.
I looked down at myself – I was still wearing my leather jacket over my fancy bra, and my slightly too-tight jeans from my morning-after kit. My skin was pale and whole – not a mark on me. Even my jeans were clean, intact, without a single tear or sign of damage. I flipped my hair out of my eyes and glared at him, part of me registering surprise that my hair was dry – hadn’t I been soaking wet a few minutes ago? He and I had been trying to kill each other a minute ago; why would he heal me?
“How did you do that?” he said, even as I demanded “Why did you do that?”
“I didn’t do it!” we said, again in unison.
He looked down at me, and with his face all burnt like it was it was hard to be sure, but he looked about as gobsmacked as I felt. I mean, seriously, what the fuck?
I decided I could figure it out later, and shot him. The blast knocked him off his feet and across the room. He slammed into the wall, hitting a stud and blowing chunks of drywall away. Dust rained down on him as he dropped to the floor with a brittle crunch, legs flopping like rags.
Get him, I snarled at the shadow, and no one answered me. The gun slipped out of my suddenly-numb hand. I was alone in my own skull, for the first time in my entire life. I’d dreamed of being rid of my utangards passenger, yearned for it, but as the horrifying silence echoed in my head, it felt like I was mainlining pure homesickness and despair.
I turned a slow circle, forcing myself to stay calm as I scanned the room, looking for any shadows that were darker than they should be, or where they didn’t belong. I caught sight of Irish, standing behind the bar. His face was white, expression drawn, as he met my eyes, then directed a pointed look over my shoulder. I turned to follow his gaze.
Standing on the threshold was a little girl made all of darkness like an ebony statue. She wore a ruffled, antique dress, and she was perfect in every detail, from the bows on her dress to the little ringlets of her hair. I could even see her eyelashes when she blinked at me with solid black empty eyes. She stepped daintily over a broken table and into the light of Bushie’s interior.
I’ve never in my life owned a dress like that, but I recognized the child’s face. Me, at my earliest memory, no more than twelve.
She made her way around the clutter in perfect silence, never looking away from my face, never missing a step. When she reached me, she met my gaze for what felt like a long time. My hands were shaking. The little girl made of dark raised her hand, and held up a single finger in front of my face. The gesture was unmistakable:
That’s one.
I nodded, and after a heartbeat or two, she did the same. And then she began to unravel, wisps of darkness floating up and away, droplets of inky black falling away and sliding over the floor. The dark swirled around my body, and I felt her essence sinking into my flesh, felt my shadow anchoring itself to my feet once again. She settled into my mind like someone snuggling into a favorite chair, and made silent little sighs of contentment, as though glad to be back home.
“Jesus fuck,” I breathed. That was beyond bizarre.
“Alice,” Irish began, in a remarkably diplomatic tone, and across the bar, the mystery man let out a low grunt.
“You.” I drew Baby Eagle and leveled it at the bad guy, ignoring Irish. That was a discussion I wasn’t looking forward to at all, but this – this was. He managed to lever his upper torso off the floor, and grinned a skeletal smile at me just as I arrived and kicked him in the face. “Talk.”
Mystery Man giggled instead, causing flakes of burned flesh to crumble off his face, and shook his head.
“Who – what the fuck are you?” I dropped to one knee, grabbing him by the throat. “You answer me, you crazy little shit, or –”
“Or what?” His voice was a snide little croak, and though his eyes had melted, I had the impression he was looking at me, seeing me, anyway. “What are you going to do, kill me?” He laughed again. “There’s nothing you can do to me.”
I shoved the gun into his naked chest, and the skin was ruined enough the barrel sank in an inch or so. “How are you at escaping dimensional rifts?”
“What?” He seemed surprised by the question. “Amazingly good, now that you mention it.”
“Yeah?” I said, figuring that even if I didn’t get any answers out of the bastard, at least blowing him into the void would get him out of my hair. I pushed the gun into him some more, forcing him back until he was lying prone on the floor. He felt brittle and weak; it was easy. I pulled the trigger, and got back as fast as I could.
For a moment, I thought I’d made a dud load. That was the problem with magic bullets. You never knew if they were going to work until you pulled the trigger. But when he began to scream, I relaxed. Ah, there we go.
He spun a full circle, scrabbling at the floorboards for a handhold, air rushing at him. I held my hair out of my face as the wind picked up and a gaping hole opened up underneath him. It widened, a hole in reality itself about a foot, a foot-and-a-half wide. He buckled where his back was broken, and his legs were sucked into the void with enough force to sever him in two. But he held fast to the floorboards, teeth ground tight in a skull grin, holding his upper half at the brink of oblivion.
His head tossed from side to side, screaming through his teeth, but he didn’t budge. I’ve used these rounds to erase an armored truck once before. I’d stood there and watched the metal fold and buckle, as a two ton armored vehicle was sucked through a hole sixteen inches wide. The closer you got to the puncture, the harder the force that drew you in. There was no way he was strong enough to resist the pull, but apparently, he didn’t know that. Broken furniture and glass flew at him, beating him mercilessly before the rubble was pulled down and away into nothingness.
“Alice!” I sensed it coming even as Irish shouted. The shadow squirming lazily through the dim bar was already bringing me the wretched, vile taste that made my stomach roll and my gorge rise. It was horrid, and all too familiar. Even as my guts tried to stage an upward rebellion, I recognized the godawful stench and flavor that had accompanied the Cur-ruptions and the warped bugwoman creature.
I shifted on my knee to see a thin mist, dull and gray and somehow greasy-looking, rolling through the walls, leaving behind a slick sheen like oil on water. It poured in through the broken windows, seeped in around the sills, under the door. It ran down the walls, peeling the smoke-stained plaster in its wake, warping the neon Bud Light sign on the wall. The darkness in the room thinned as my shadow came back to me. I felt her, growling in my mind, glaring out of my eyes, raking down my nerves and pulsing in my veins.
I can’t describe how happy I was to hear her in my head again.
“What is it?” Irish asked, and his voice was stronger now, steadier, a little more what I was used to hearing out of him.
“What do you think it is?” I snapped over my shoulder. “It’s here.” In front of me, what was left of mister wise-guy started screaming even louder, and scrabbled at the wood trying to escape the almost-a-black-hole that I’d opened underneath him.
“No no no not that!” he gibbered. “Gotta get away get away can’t let it get me again no please…” He struggled and fought, but couldn’t move. I grinned wolfishly. I hadn’t managed to banish him, quite, but I had pinned the bastard. The hole would last only a few minutes, but it was a start.
I could hear something on the porch, now, the sound of wood planks popping and snapping, metal bending, and something deeper into the walls, maybe support beams cracking. I heard Irish stepping back, and looked over my shoulder to see him lifting his gun again.
“What are you doing, man? The only time that damn gun’s been worth a piss all night is when you shot me!” I waved at the kitchen doors. “Get out.”
“I’m not leaving you here alone to deal with that.” He nodded towards the front door, and Honey gave a low, awful moan as I turned to look. The whole door crumpled and folded like a paper bag, and something loomed in the darkness out there. An evil, red glow spilled out into the bar, coming from a huge, single eye in a humanoid shape. It stepped forward, through the twisting door. The door frame actually warped, widening to make room for it.
The shadow’s response was instant, savage, and violent. It filled me with ice and snarling hatred, something so deeply ingrained and primal that it killed my fear before it really had a chance to bloom. She wanted that thing dead. I wanted it dead. It was all I could do to stay on top of her instincts and not charge the creature.
From behind me, shocked, Irish said, “Is that a fuckin’ traffic light?”
It was. Embedded in the thing’s chest was an ordinary, everyday traffic light. As I watched, it blinked to green. The light was mounted sideways, and reached from shoulder to shoulder on a huge, misshapen body… and those lights are a lot bigger up close than you’d think.
One foot was a concrete cinderblock with tatters of meat wrapped around it – I saw a toe dangling off from one side. A patch of red pubic hair and a torn penis adorned its hip, and its other leg was made of flesh with a different, darker skin tone. There was a face growing out of its side, shoved down and out by the metal of the traffic light embedded just above it – it had a patch red hair of its own, and its eyes flicked from side to side, and I could see his lips moving.
The opposite arm had two eyes and a mouth that stared blankly and licked lips that were stretched tight to the point of breaking. The whole creature bulged in strange places, and there were movements under that taut mélange of skin and bone and clutter, as though things underneath were jockeying for position.
Everywhere there were tears and gaps in the skin, leaking streaks of crusty blood and wisps of that greasy foul mist. Atop the traffic light was the head of a German shepherd wedged close beside a plastic mannequin head and a black iron bell.
The light turned yellow.
“Yep. That’s a fucking traffic light.” It was all I could think to say.
The monster extended one arm toward me, the one over the dangling head. I stared at it, falling back without even thinking about it. The arm seemed to be made from two human arms, and eight fingers and two thumbs, twisted and broken and too long, stretched in my direction. One finger was still wearing an ugly ruby ring. I backed away until I felt the suction from the void hole at my back and had to stop.
The creature raised that arm, and the motion brought the dangling face higher, and it met my horrified stare with one of its own.
I recognized him. He was a local Arcana magician, who worked in City Planning. Carl… something. He was an occasional customer of mine, since his own magic was nearly useless for day-to-day stuff. I remembered selling him a wand once, with a little wind elemental bound into it. It wasn’t good for much except levitating and moving small objects, but he’d laughed like a little boy on Christmas morning when he played with it. He had been kind of a jerk, most of the time, but I had a soft spot for him ever since that day when he’d almost danced in joy at being able to levitate a bowling ball for the first time.
“Carl?” I gasped.
The crispy asshole behind me stopped dead even as the bell chimed on the hollowman’s head and the face in his shoulder started gibbering and screaming… just exactly the same way. “No no no please someone please Alice? I, I, I oh god…” He shrieked wordlessly as his view was shifted down again when the creature lowered its arm and stepped closer.
I looked over my shoulder at the almost-corpse trapped in the floor. “Carl?”
“Did that thing just answer to my name?” he asked, and the tatters of scorched flesh that made up his eyebrows wrinkled together in a gruesome frown, causing a shower of blackened ash to flake away and plummet down into the emptiness below.
The hollowman’s light flicked to red, as did the glow within its eyes, and my stalker studied the monstrosity, leaning to see around me.
“Is that my outlander? Disgusting.” Soot-streaked teeth chewed at the nub of a blackened lip, and then my stalker glanced up at me. “No, I think I’d rather have yours.” The void round finally expired and what was left of him flopped onto the floorboards again. “Shit. This body’s trashed. At this rate, I’m going to run out before tomorrow night…”
“Carl!” I barked the name, and sure enough, the hollowman paused again, the floorboards warping and curling under its feet.
“It did! It’s answering to my…” he let his voice trail off. “Wait a minute…”
“You’re Carl? Seriously?”
“But what am I doing over there?” he whispered, crabbing backward on his elbows, unable to look away from the approaching hollowman. “I’m… I’m dead! Aren’t I?”
Irish came around the bar, gun leveled. He was squinting like it hurt to look at the creature, but that didn’t stop him from shooting, steady, measured shots one after another. If the monster noticed, it didn’t seem to care very much, and I saw Irish shake his head, a sardonic little smile twisting his mouth.
I sidestepped, out of the line of fire and more importantly, out from between the Carls. “Carl, buddy, I think someone wants a word with you.”
The hollowman shambled forward, and as it came, I made out pieces and parts from at least four people welded into its mishmash body. Eyes, a breast, a foot growing out of its back… The mist it bled burned when it touched my bare stomach, and my shadow coalesced around it, dispersing the contaminant before it could get into my body. The taste was indescribably foul, much worse than the corruptions we’d tasted earlier.
“Irish!” I snapped, waving a hand to get his attention. “Get back! Get Honey and get out! Don’t let the mist touch you! Remember the dogs!”
He shot me a look, eyes widening in horror as he realized what I meant, then down at the greasy fog swirling around his boots. For once, he didn’t question me. He vaulted over the bar and dragged Honey out of her hidey-hole under the sink, pulling her towards the kitchen.
“Alice! Catch!” I turned and saw the Crispy Carl throw something my way. It was his ruby ring. I caught it out of force of habit and was about to pitch it aside, when I noticed the feel of a network of magic built into the hideous piece of jewelry. This was an artifact? It seemed to be a receiver unit of some kind, but for what? I’d need my lab and my equipment to really take it apart and figure out what it was for…
I looked up in time to see the creature’s warped and mangled doublefist as it came right at my face.
My shield belt flared, and the brunt of the blow was dispersed, but the belt did nothing when I hit the wall a couple of feet behind me. My head bounced off the drywall and stars burst in my eyes. I slid to the floor, limp, as the hollowman came at me, my vision dimming, the shadow howling in my head. My hand flopped to the floor, and the last thing I saw as the hollowman’s cement foot swung at me was that godawful, ugly-assed ruby ring rolling away across the floor.
Table of Contents / Chapter Twenty-Five >>
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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