(James and I hared off to Michigan this past week for the holidays. Between that and Christmas weekend itself, we’re running a bit behind. So, this is half a chapter. Keep your eyes peeled, though. The other half will be up sometime this evening, after we finish pummeling it into shape. In the meantime, enjoy this. — Marci)

Mama deAngelo lives in a four-story mansion in Grosse Point Shores, down by the river. It’s a gorgeous place, a sprawling brick and stone and plaster thing with I don’t know, crenelations and cupolas and all sorts of fancy architectural bits whose correct names I can’t be bothered to memorize. My mansion, I should point out, was somewhat bigger, though less fortified.

The first floor windows are all stained glass, and every window sits behind iron bars sculpted to look like rose vines. The walls are thick enough, and reinforced well enough, to give a Sherman tank second thoughts. The doors are reinforced steel encased in oak. The whole thing sits on walled grounds, and I shit you not, the woman has pillboxes on her property. Nobody told me about it, but the grounds are mined, too. My shadow and I are nosy, what can I say? I’ll personally guarantee the magical defenses are top notch, because I put them in. That’s how I got started working for Gianna.

I have to say, if I had to pick a place to weather out a full-on assault from angry Knights, homicidal Ordermen, bloodthirsty vampires and rampaging monsters from beyond reality, Gianna’s home would definitely come in near the top of the list.

So it was a goddamn shame when Michael didn’t take us there.

“What the shit is this?” I demanded, as we looked up at the abandoned rat-trap where Al had stopped.

“One of Mama’s bolt-holes.” Michael shrugged, leading us up to the front porch. It creaked when he and Larry stepped up on it, and groaned when Irish joined them.

“She didn’t stay in her mansion?” The shadow poked at the underpinnings of the porch and filled my mouth with the moldy, earthy flavor of wood rot, and the feel of termites and wood worms wriggling across my skin. I arched an eyebrow with real concern.

“’Course not. First place Duane would look, right?” Michael turned to eye me. “Would you have looked for her here?”

“No,” I admitted.

“Aye,” Irish said, nodding. We all glanced at him, and he shrugged. “Well, maybe not right here, but not at her home. This seems about right.” He looked around at all of us, and shrugged, one hand on the hilt of his sword. “She’ll be underground. Her kind always seeks a deep hole when they’re hiding. I have done this before, you know.”

“He is so good at this,” Larry said, elbowing his new best friend Michael.

“Yeah. Well. Duane ain’t. Good at this, that is.” Michael rubbed the back of his neck. “Most of the vamps in Detroit are his, right? So they don’t bother hiding. He owns them. But there’s a handful of us that ain’t. Like Mama. That’s why he keeps such a close eye on her.”

“Not close enough.” Irish glanced around, studying the boarded windows.

“Not close enough,” Michael agreed, grinning.

“How old is Duane?” Larry asked. “I know they call him Eldest, but what does that mean?”

Michael looked around, up and down the street. “Duane was a fur-trapper once, back when Detroit,” he said it Deh-Twah, “was a fort with wooden walls. Come on. She’s been waiting on you.”

“I’ll bet,” I muttered, and the shadow grumbled wary misgivings in the back of my mind as I stepped up on the porch. Following her directions, I crossed without incident, watching the wood bend and groan under Irish’s feet as he approached the door.

Michael held the door for us and ushered us into the empty living room, waving at Al to go move the car out of sight. The room was dark and dank, and the air had that empty, mildewy stink houses build up when no one lives in them. A pair of soiled mattresses and a rusty steel drum were the only furniture, and there was an artfully displayed collection of garbage. None of it was legit, though. Oh, the urine in the mattress was real enough, but those syringes had never been used. Half the food wrappers still had rotten and desiccated food in them, too. Looking into the kitchenette, we could see that the appliances and most of the plumbing had been ripped out, presumably to sell for scrap. It was cold, too, judging by the way Larry and Irish kept their hands in their coat pockets. The shadow spooled out into the darkness, feeling out the room and finding a network of careful tripwires that ran to shaped charges.

“It’s trapped.” I grabbed Irish’s arm before he could go another step, and Michael said “Of course it is,” like that was the dumbest thing he’d heard all night.

“Michael will steer us safely, don’t worry,” Larry said, grinning that insufferable smirk of his from behind those ridiculous glasses of his.

I’d had just about enough of this kid and his pity, I decided. Also, whatever Mikey had to say, I wasn’t about to walk into a trap and let Gianna act out some of her more creative threats. “No need. I think I’ll take a quick look around,” I said, turning to face Larry. “Won’t take but a second.” Whatever he saw on my face made him flinch, even before the darkness rose up around me like a flaring cobra’s hood. The shadows all over the room thickened and grew at the same time, as my shadow took note of the slack I’d given to her mental leash. She probed, and when she found me willing to indulge her, she stretched. The darkness swallowed us all, a presence in the night that was nearly palpable.

Irish shivered, and took a step back towards me. He shivered, and I registered surprise that my shadow had been willing to touch him even as she registered delight that he was helpless to prevent it. What? How would he have prevented it?

Larry gave a little gasp, and Michael shifted on his feet, looking around. “What the fuck?” He sniffed, lifting his head and scenting like a dog, but I knew he was as nose-blind as he was sight-blind. My shadow was a nearly solid presence in the house, and even the microscopic particles in the air were locked in place like tiny flies in amber.

“Ah, there we go,” I sighed, taking it all in as the shadow continued growing, getting thicker and heavier. The men shifted and turned, and I knew that to them, my voice seemed to be coming from everywhere. “Living room, alley kitchen, a bedroom, and a bathroom. The walls are full of dynamite and shrapnel.” I licked my lips, thoughtful, as I glanced upwards to the ceiling, where the shadow had noted freshly patched plaster along the edges of the walls. “And wood pellets. Nice touch. Tiny cameras here and there, too. Two more bedrooms and another bathroom upstairs. The whole hall is wired and rigged, but it’s all empty up there.”

Irish shifted on his feet to look at me – my way, rather. He couldn’t be following the sound of my voice, but I wouldn’t put it past him to just automatically memorize where everyone in the room was standing from moment to moment. Seems the kind of thing he’d do. Michael had bared his teeth and was taking a few swipes at the air, and I could feel the frown on his face, each individual wrinkle in his forehead, and the crinkles at the corners of his eyes as he squinted into the gelled ink. Next to him, Larry had a hand to his chest, and we could hear him laboring to drag in air.

Interesting. I’d never had that happen before. I could feel his windpipe, his bronchial passages, and the miniscule chambers in his lungs. I could taste his heartbeat, and feel him shudder and shiver as each labored breath only drew in more of my cold shadow.

“Gianna’s in the basement, with Robert.” I recognized their flavors. “Place is dolled right up down there, too. Not very big, but all freshly reinforced. Three inches of steel under this floor – I bet the whole place could go up without mussing her hair down there. She’s got a nice little apartment built down there. Tastes like she spent a pretty penny on it. Teak. Egyptian cotton. Antique furniture.” Gianna was on her feet in the basement, still as stone, the Victorian chair behind her tipped over from the speed of her rise. Robert stood by the stairs with a heavy pistol in one hand, the other clutching his throat as he struggled to breathe. “Pretty new, though. Tastes like the paint’s only been there a few months. Six months, tops.”

“Alice.” Irish voice was sharp, catching my attention. He reached out and took hold of my shoulder, gently. “Larry can’t breathe.”

“I noticed.” I nudged at the shadow and she bristled, like an angry cat. Ripples of cold flowed through the room, and I felt the windows frost over in convoluted fractal designs. Larry was shaking, and would have fallen if Michael hadn’t caught him. This was a new sensation, and my shadow and I were fascinated by it. We wanted to experiment, see how well this worked. Larry was teetering on the edge of death, and my mind was focused on the dark pooling on the surface of his eyes. Just inside there, I knew, his soul was fluttering and dancing like a butterfly in a jar. It would be so easy to reach in and pull it to me, swallow it down using the shadow as a connection, and that was something we’d never tried before, either.

“Alice!” Irish said, louder, and gave my arm a little shake. The shadow coiled around him, heavy and thick enough that he felt it and stiffened, and I nearly slapped at him before I realized that it was my shadow’s impulse, not mine. I snarled myself, and clenched my fists, imagining the shadow’s substance crumpling and bleeding in my grip. She cried out in my mind, and I lashed at her with my will. She considered attacking me in return, but I let my anger and my will speak for me.

Reluctantly, and somewhat regretfully, the shadow settled and thinned. It was as if she’d wanted to test herself against me in a final winner-take-all contest, but had only just talked herself out of it. Barely.

I heard Larry pull in a deep breath, felt his chest swell with it, and downstairs, Robert managed the same. “That’s better,” I said, doing my best to sound as though I were still completely in control. “Let’s see. Not much more worth mentioning downstairs. Wide open space larger than the building up here, with a bedroom nook in the southwest corner for Gianna, and a bathroom under the stairs. That must be for Robert. He’s got a cot right by the stairs, too, and he’s standing there with the gun leveled, so I’ll go first when we head downstairs. The first step has a tripwire. No explosives or anything, though, so it’s actually a tripwire. Nice. Stairs are pretty steep. I wouldn’t want to do a header down those. Also, there were bats in the attic. Seriously. Forty-eight of them if you count the babies. Is Gianna one of the ones that control vermin?”

“’Were?’” Michael’s voice wasn’t quite shaky, but it wasn’t the same confident baritone he usually used, either.

“Yep. I just killed them.” I grinned in the darkness as fuzzy little bodies rained to the floor up in the attic. I pulled the light bulb out of the inner pocket of my coat and gave it a quick shake, holding it up and letting it go. The light grew brighter and the shadow pulled back, forming a halo of light that just barely reached all the men. I shrugged out of Irish’s grip and stretched, my arms flung out wide, feeling my back crack pleasantly. When I moved again, little plumes of shadow floated in my wake, like smoky afterimages. “Come along, boys.” I gestured, and the shadow opened a tunnel in the house that was sullenly lit by the gentle, fragile-seeming glow of the Edison bulb. The men blinked in the sudden illumination, glancing askance at the swirling darkness surrounding us. It seemed that things were moving in that dark fog. Irish glanced at me with wide eyes, and Larry looked like he was about to pee himself. “Ladies first. Follow me.”

I kept the Edison bulb floating in front of me as I walked down the tunnel of light. It left me silhouetted to the men, though I neglected to cast any shadow their way. The encroaching darkness behind them prompted them to follow me through the alley kitchen with its moldy, peeling plaster walls and loose floor tiles. The basement door was locked, of course, but through the shadow I could feel the tumblers in the heavy lock and the several dead bolts set into the frame of the reinforced door.

Feed on this, I thought at the shadow, and I felt the frost as it spread over the metal. More, I told her. She’d already eaten the ambient heat right out of the steel, but that wasn’t enough. I willed her to take more, and more, until the effort she was expending far outstripped the energy she gained from the process. We felt the metal growing even colder, felt the steel growing brittle in what had to be near absolute zero. I gave it a sharp nudge with my shoulder and all that metal snapped like glass. The door swung open with an appropriate creak, and Robert fired into the darkness. The bullet bounced off my shoulder, and some poor demon across town earned another dent in his forehead, if he hadn’t gotten that glue washed off yet.

“Just me, Robert,” I called down cheerfully as light washed down the stairs at my bidding. The shadow burbled a chuckle in the back of my head, enjoying the game, enjoying the freedom, the flexing of her muscle. We didn’t get to do this very often, and never in front of witnesses. Not witnesses who lived to tell the story. I stepped over the tripwire, pointing it out to Irish as Robert’s face came into view around the corner of the stairwell.

“Alice,” he called up, wary. “Ah, sorry about that.”

“Oh, no problem. It was just a bullet.” The stairs were teak, their surfaces carved in an exquisite diamond grid pattern to provide traction. The walls were painted a marbled cream, very tasteful. “Gianna,” I called as I headed down the stairs, trailing wisps and swirls of shadow as I went. Heavier patches of darkness spread where my feet fell, running down the steps like oil. “I heard you were looking for me.”

I reached the bottom and stepped into the room, which brightened as the shadow pulled back and let my light permeate the basement. Gloom lurked swirling in the corners and drifting across the floor, though, obscuring the lovely Persian rugs on the hardwood floor.

“Alice. Dear,” Gianna said, straightening as I came into view, smoothing down the front of her white silk top. “How good to see you.” Her expression was blasé, voice calm, but her eyes shifted as she watched the dancing shadows.

I stepped out into the basement proper, hands in my pockets as I looked around. “I believe you threatened to skullfuck me with my own femur this morning. Also there was something about rape.” I took my hands from my pockets, bringing my cigarettes and lighter with them as Larry and Michael stepped into the room. Irish stood behind them on the stairs, next to Robert, who still had the gun. I shook a cigarette out of the pack and put it to my lips, lighting it.

“Did I?” Gianna put on a pleasant smile, patting her carefully coiffed hair smooth. “Fetch the lady an ashtray, Robert. And do put that gun away. I don’t think it will be much use.”

I tucked my cigarettes away. “Not a lot,” I agreed, drawing on my cigarette and letting out a plume of gray smoke. “No need to get the fancy silver one from the china cabinet, Robert. I’ll take one of the glass ones from the kitchen cupboard.” Robert edged behind me, towards the kitchenette to retrieve the ashtray, and Irish stepped up to my shoulder.

“Sit down, Alice. And do introduce your interesting new friends.” She turned to right her chair, sweeping her burgundy skirt underneath her as she perched at the edge of it, legs crossed demurely. She looked young and lovely, delicate and petite, but I could still taste the blood on her breath, the scraps of skin still caught between her teeth.

Gianna had a sort of parlor set up in the center of the room, spindly Victorian furniture arranged around a coffee table, elegant tapered candles – since snuffed by the shadow’s arrival – set out on the tables to add a bit of extra light. I sent my light bulb to floating from candle to candle, willing a surge of magic into it to overheat the device. Two of the fireflies died in the process, but in seconds the candles were all relit. Once that was done, I set my somewhat dimmed witchlight to hover near the ceiling over over the coffee table, and I followed it into the center of the room and took a seat across from Gianna. The furniture looked gorgeous, but it wasn’t worth a damn, comfort-wise. I sat, and Robert set an ashtray on the table next to me. I tapped ash and hooked a thumb over my shoulder at Irish, who was standing right behind me, taking the measure of the room.

“The Irishman.”

“Really?” Gianna arced a slender, elegant eyebrow and directed a decidedly more sultry look his way. “Oh, my. How do you do?” I looked up just in time to see Irish wrinkling his nose, and smirked as I looked back to Gianna. “I see.” She put on a pout, and if I didn’t know Gianna believed in practice just as much as I did, I’d be tempted to think it was real.

“Don’t forget Larry, here,” Michael chimed in, waving at his friend as he and Larry approached. “Told you I’d find Alice for you, Mama.”

“Yes, so you did. Good boy.” Michael beamed. He lived for that praise. Gianna turned a critical eye on Larry. “How interesting. Have you brought dinner?” she asked, turning back to me.

“No, she has not.” Irish crossed his arms, and I knew without looking that he’d put on that imposing stony expression of his, the one that always worried me when it was aimed my way. It didn’t appear to bother Gianna much, though. She’s the original cool customer.

“No loss,” she said, studying Irish, now. “I never cared for the taste of nigger. And that skinny little porch monkey doesn’t look like he’d have more than a few swallows in him anyway.” She smiled at Irish, crinkling her nose at her little witticism, barely stopping short of an actual ‘tee-hee.’ Dear lord, did she think she was being cute?

“Look here, you bitch,” Larry started, and Michael clapped a hand over his mouth, moving so fast his hand was a blur. The rest of Larry’s sentence was a surprised mumble.

“Sorry, Mama. He won’t do it again.” Michael kept his hand firmly over Larry’s mouth, giving him the exact same kind of sharp look you might give a reluctant dog you’ve just called to heel. “He’s a friend of mine,” Michael said with a firmness of tone that surprised me a bit.

“Keeping pets now?” Gianna plucked a champagne glass from the table and took a dainty sip of the red sludge within. She made a little moue of disgust and handed it off to Robert. “Be a love and warm that up again, would you?”

“Ma’am,” Robert said, butling off towards the kitchenette again.

“I assume Michael’s told you about my Benny?” Gianna lifted her eyebrows in inquiry, turning her attention to me and dismissing everyone else in the room

“Yeah.” I flicked a quick look around the room. Larry was standing with his fists clenched, but still muzzled by Michael’s hand. Irish was frowning heavily at the vampiress, brows drawn down as he glared at her. “Something woke up, but not Benny, and whoever it is is whipping magic around. Lots of magic. Makes a really impressive light show.”

“Yes. Duane’s done something to my little boy. I’ll need you to fix that. Standard fee?” I snorted a laugh at Gianna, tapping ash and shaking my head. “More?” she asked with a look in her eye like she was already doing the accounting.

“Yeah, about that.” I sat back in my chair, kicking one foot up on my knee as the microwave dinged. “Here’s the problem, Gianna. There is no more Benny. He’s gone, and that’s nobody’s fault but his own.” From the corner of my eye, I saw Michael lift his hand from Larry’s mouth with a watchful, warning look. “If you want me to explain how that happened, everyone can have a seat and we’ll have a nice civil discussion about it. Otherwise…” I shrugged my shoulders.

“Oh, yes, do.” Gianna shifted in her chair to face me full on, her narrowed eyes flashing a cat-like green as the light caught them. “And make this good, dear, or all the impressive entrances in the world won’t get you out of here alive.”

Table of Contents / Chapter 33.5 >>

---

Black Alice © Marci Sischo and James Agle | All rights reserved.
SiteMeter.com:

Image credit: Luke Wisley.