Dead Man Rising

Chapter Thirty-five

I suppose the last place either Mirovitch or Keller would have expected me to go was the cafeteria. There was a wall of boarded-up windows on one side, two lone leftover tables stacked against the wall, and insulation hung from the ceiling in long swathes. It was tactically exposed, and I'd had to break open a door to get in here—and if the sound of screeching metal and my own jagged breathing didn't bring Mirovitch, what I was going to do next would.

I was only a few steps in before my foot came down on something soft. My sword whipped out, and I found myself looking at an innocuous sleeping bag, lying tangled on the floor. The smell of canned beef soup hung in the air, and I smelled candle wax as well. Candle wax and unwashed human—and the cold, fetid reek of Mirovitch, dust and magick and feces and chalk and aftershave.

I'd found a lair. The trouble was, I wasn't sure of what.

I dug in my bag with one trembling hand. My sword glowed blue. My frantic fingers couldn't find any chalk, though I knew I had some. I could almost feel time winding down, the clocksprings of whatever was going to happen ticking away, closer and closer, rising through the water to sink its teeth into my thrashing legs.

I pulled my hand out of my bag and took a deep breath flavored with human and not-so-human scents, my own smoky demon smell suddenly strong as a shield in my nostrils. Reached into my pocket, fingers closing around the fléchette in its plasilica sheath.

The touch of cold metal shocked me back into some kind of sense. I crouched down on the floor in the middle of the caf, a swordsman's crouch, my blade held out to one side, the fléchette in my left hand. What do I need chalk for? I'm part demon.

The circle swirled in the air, dust scorching as the fire in me rose, whipcracking in small, controlled bursts, a tattoo of Power burning into the concrete under the linoleum. It took bare seconds. By the time it was done, I had a tolerable approximation of a double circle scored around me with red-glowing Power—and between the two circles, the subtly altered shapes of the Feeder glyphs Kellerman Lourdes had created writhed. Every candle Lourdes had placed in here burst into flame, suddenly alive with fire, their glow warm and welcoming. The fléchette began to hum, metal glowing, heating up in my hand. My pocket, the one holding the leftover spade necklace, began to smoke. I didn't have a hand left to fish it out, so I just crouched, on guard.

One of the plaswood windows blew in. Then another. Another. Splinters skidded across the floor.

Silence descended. Here was where it would end.

Do you believe in Fate, Danny Valentine?

I gulped down air, the three phantom scars on my back alive. The vanished brand along my lower-left buttock began to ache, dully at first, and then with increasing pain. A curl of smoke drifted up from my pocket. I waited.

The door I'd wrenched open creaked as it was pulled wide, then ripped off its hinges. And into the cafeteria shambled Kellerman Lourdes.

Now that I saw him up close, I vaguely remembered him as a tall, gawky, acne-pocked Skinlin, always on the periphery of whatever activity was being conducted. His career at Rigger had been singularly free of rumors and whispers. It was as if nobody noticed him at all. The invisible man.

Part of the puzzle became clear as I studied him. He stepped into the caf and watched me, dead dark eyes sparking with blue pinpricks, his thick wattled cheeks quivering ever so slightly.

"You were a Feeder already." Breathless, I sounded like I was fourteen again.

And scared.

That was why he'd been invisible; and that was why he could get close to Mirovitch that fateful night with Polyamour and Dolores. He'd had a Feeder's camouflage; it was no use being a psychic vampire if you shouted it to the heavens. No, they were all-but-invisible, especially to children, which was what made them so bloody dangerous. In a normal Hegemony psi school he would have been tested, treated, and more than likely saved, free to live out a normal life as a psion. But in Mirovitch's kingdom he was left untreated… and so he used that camouflage to kill Mirovitch with the others, probably taking Mirovitch's death into his own psyche and sealing his own fate as a Feeder—or even worse, a Feeder's mule. A physical body for the ka of the dead Headmaster to ride.

He stared at me fixedly, his face slack and wooden. Then something swirled in the bottom of his eyes, crawled for the surface, and tried to speak. "You're… not… one. Of. Them." He cocked his head to the side, his throat swelling as he wrestled for control of his own voice. "Get. Get out. Out of here. I can't… hold…"

"He's riding you," I realized out loud. "You're a Feeder's mule. But you kept him down for ten years." I felt a thin burst of satisfaction at having guessed right, along with a flare of guilt for how stupid I'd been. It was all plain as day now.

"I can't—" Kellerman Lourdes gasped, spittle flying from his lips. He twisted, hunching down, some terrible battle being waged for control of his body. "I can't stop him now. You… run…"

Then his head jerked forward, like a snake's quick whipping strike. The fléchette in my left hand abruptly cooled, the cold stinging my fingers far more than heat would have. I held on, grimly. Waiting.

Then blue light bloomed from the circle of glyphs I'd scratched into the floor. The necklace, still in my pocket, fell as I shifted. It had burned a hole straight through the Kevlar-reinforced canvas of Jace's coat. It fell, the chain writhing like a live thing, and hit the floor with an oddly musical tinkle.

The circle cracked. Blue light flared like a thunderclap, and I saw Kellerman Lourdes's entire body jerk as ectoplasm streamed from mouth and nose and eyes and ears, a coughing mass of it. I dove back as Mirovitch's ka streaked for me, its inhuman hands turned into venom-dipped claws. Only this was not Mirovitch, the stoop-shouldered tweedy Feeder Headmaster who liked to prey on children.

This was the ka, grown monstrous and foul, Mirovitch seen through the eyes of a child, with claws and fangs and the leprous blue-burning eyes of a closet-hiding goblin.

I screamed, scrambling back, forgetting I was holding a sword. The backlash of the circle's cracking and breaking from inside poured up my spine and jerked a coughing yell from my throat as the Headmaster descended on me, his claws raking my belly, one catching in my ribs. A hot gush of demon blood boiled out, I convulsed, and Mirovitch dove for my open mouth, gagging reeking ectoplasm forcing down my throat.