Dead Man Rising

Chapter Four

Late-afternoon sun made Jace's hair glow like a furnace. I blinked, rubbing at my eyes, and slid out of the cab while Jace finished paying the bespectacled cabby. The man had taken a fifty-credit tip to get us to the Saint City South station in record time. My stomach was still churning. Thank the gods part-demons didn't throw up often.

Or at least, I didn't, and I was the only one I knew of. It made sweeping generalizations a whole lot easier. I've never been a fan of sweeping generalizations, but I'm all in favor of efficiency.

Jace clambered out, stood next to me as the cab lifted off and zipped into the traffic lanes, its underside glowing with hovercells and reactive paint. I took a deep breath of the stink that passed for air in Saint City, full of the effluvia of dying cells, the cloying smell of decay—my nose wanted to wrinkle. I let out a short whistle, my rings swirling with steady light.

"Would you look at that." Jace scratched at his hairline with blunt fingers. He tapped his staff once, sharply, on the sidewalk pavement, making a sound like two antique billiard balls smacking together.

Gabriele Spocarelli was waiting for us. She stood on the steps of the police station, a short woman, slim and graceful as a ballai dancer, her sleek dark hair cut in a short bob that framed her classically pretty face. There was a faint shadow of crow's-feet at the edges of her dark eyes, and her air of serene precision had deepened—if that was possible. A cigarette hung from the corner of her chiseled mouth, unlit.

Yep. She's not happy. If she'd lit the cigarette it would have been different. But unlit cigarette plus strained, tense shoulders and an aura singing with blue-violet under its Necromance sparkles all added up to a very unhappy Gabriele.

Her emerald flashed a greeting. The tattoo on her left cheek shifted slightly, inked lines running on her pale skin. My left cheek burned, the emerald flickering in response, sending an electric zing all the way down to my neckbones. Power shifted, stained the air with electricity.

I approached cautiously, my right hand starting to ache. It was a normal ache, so I ignored it. She watched us both come up the steps, unmoving, her aura flushed a deep purple-red like a bruise.

Nope. Gabe was not amused.

"Well," Jace said from behind me. "Still as pretty as ever, Spooky. How's Eddie?"

"Monroe." She tilted her head slightly, the only mark of respect she'd give him. Neither she nor Eddie had forgiven Jace his treachery, his connection to the demon who had killed Doreen and damn near killed me as well—but they were civil for my sake. I'd only presided over one short, strained meeting six months ago, where we hashed out that nobody was going to kill anyone else and all accounts balanced. Jace hadn't known that the head of the Mob Family he'd run from was Vardimal Santino, and just this once, we agreed, the circumstances were extraordinary enough that Jace could get a pass.

Well, Gabe and I had agreed. Eddie simply glowered and quit threatening to kill him. We were all a lot happier when just Gabe and I met at Fa Choy's once a week.

Gabe's eyes cut away, as if she couldn't bear to look at him anymore. "Sends his greetings. You made good time."

I shrugged. "What good are ill-gotten gains if you can't use 'em?" The sunlight blurred as my pupils reacted, squeezing down to pinpricks. That was one thing about having excellent demon vision—bright lights were more painful than ever. "What's up? I assume you didn't call me out here to stand around chatting."

"Fuck you too." She tore the unlit cigarette out of her mouth and tossed it into the trash-laden gutter, maybe for effect, maybe because she was too upset to remember she hadn't lit it. If it was a gesture, it was a grand one; my mouth curled up in an unwonted smile, my cheek burning as the tattoo settled again. "Come on up."

We followed her up the steps and into the police station. Old blue linoleum flecked with little sparkles squeaked underfoot. Fluorescents buzzed—they didn't have the budget for full-spectrum lights in the halls where normals worked, and I shuddered at the thought of working under that soulless light day after day. I followed at Gabe's iron-straight back and felt my hands shake slightly with the urge to touch a knifehilt, caress the smooth butt of a gun. It wasn't like her to be rude. It doubly wasn't like her to call and demand my presence. We met once a week, when I wasn't out chasing bad guys, had dinner, carefully didn't talk about Nuevo Rio or demons. Instead, we traded stories about bounties, bullshitted, and kept a careful distance that was as welcome as it was teeth-grindingly annoying. But I couldn't complain. The distance was there because of me.

Because of what I'd become.

My back prickled slightly, uneasy; fine hairs rising on my nape and the coppery tang of demon adrenaline in my mouth. I could feel it trembling on the edges of my awareness, the scorching smell of fate like the kick of hard liquor against the back of my throat.

Just like a bounty.

Up on the third floor, the Spook Squad hung out. They weren't chained in the basement like in the old days—no, now the parapsychic arm of law enforcement had corner offices, a good budget, and decent equipment at last. Computer decks hummed on desks buried under drifts of paperwork, full-spectrum lamps sat on every desk. I saw a Shaman with a staff made of twisted ironwood prop his boots on his desk, leaning back in his chair, his aura swirling red-orange; three Ceremonials clustered at the watercooler, laughing about something. All three of them wore sidearms—police-issue plasguns—and long black synthwool coats, their accreditation tattoos shifting on their cheeks. The air resonated with Power, my rings sparked again. Heads turned as I followed Gabe.

They weren't stupid and head-dead like normals. Even if they couldn't name what it was, they could see the twisting black-diamond patterns staining my aura like geometric flames.

Part-demon. Unique, even among psions. I could have done without the honor.

We reached Gabe's cubicle, and she dropped into her cushioned ergonomic chair. She pointed at the two folding chairs on the other side of her desk. "Take a load off." Her mouth turned into a hard line. The expression didn't do anything for her pretty face, but it would take a lot more than that to make Gabe look ugly. "You want some coffee?"

I shook my head. My braid tapped against my back. "Jace?"

"Chango, I need a beer." He shook his head, leaning his staff against the cubicle wall. The bones tied to the raffia twine crowning the length of oak clacked uneasily. "But no. What the hell's goin' on, Spooky?"

"I've got a case." Her voice was pitched low and fierce. "I need you, Danny."

Now I wasn't just uneasy. I was heading into fullblown alarmed. "What for?" I was curious too. It wasn't like her to pussyfoot.

She pushed the file toward me. There were only one or two clear spots, the rest of the desk taken up with paperwork, a nice custom Pentath computer deck, an inlaid-wood box that probably held a mismatched double set of tarot cards (Gabe was secondarily talented as a tarot witch), an in-box buried under more paper, and two dusty, full bottles of brandy perched precariously near the edge. "Take a look."

I sighed, scooped up the file. "You're a real lady of mystery, aren't you." Flipped it open, the smooth manila giving under my black-painted nails. My back wasn't crawling with gooseflesh—for some reason my new demon body didn't have the reflex—but the sensation of prickling on my skin still remained, a human sensation I would have been glad for if it hadn't been so creepy. To feel goosebumps rising under your skin but unable to press through to the surface is weird, like a phantom limb complete with ghost pain and a reflexive shudder.

They were homicide lasephotos. Of course—Gabe was a Necromance. What else?

The first photo was of a man. Or I assumed it was a man, once I took a closer look at the shape. "Anubis," I breathed, as the shapes snapped into a horrible picture behind my eyes. The worst part wasn't the loops of intestine or the pool of blood. The worst part was one outflung hand, unwounded, the fingers clutching air. The arm was a mess of meat flayed off the glaring-white bone.

Gods above, that's gruesome. "Gods above. When was this?"

"Four months ago. Keep going."

Jace shifted slightly, his chair squeaking. He knew better than to ask. I'd give him the file when I was good and done.

I flipped through a coroner's report, a standard para-psych incident report, the homicide report, neatly lase-printed. No real leads, nothing of much interest except the savagery. Finally, I looked up at Gabe. "Well?"

She pushed another file across her desk. With a sinking heart I handed the first one to Jace and took the second; Gabe's eyes were dead level and gave nothing away. "This one's about eight weeks old."

Jace whistled out through his teeth, a long low note. "Damn." From someone who had seen the type of carnage Jace Monroe had, it was almost a compliment.

I flipped open the second file. "Fuck." My voice held disgust and just a trace of something stronger—maybe fear. Paper stirred uneasily on her desk, stroked into motion by the tension in the air.

This one was even worse, if it were possible. The body lay, exposed and raw, spread-eagled on what appeared to be a cement floor. "Look past the body." Gabe's tone was soft, respectful of the corpse on the two-dimensional glossy paper.

It was hard, but I did. I saw the blurred edges of a chalk diagram, right at the very margin of the photo. I flipped to the next one—the photographer had pulled back, and I could see the chalk lines clearly. It was a double circle, inscribed with fluid spiky runes that twisted from one form to another even as I watched. Even through the lasephoto they seemed to hum with malignant force. They weren't symbols I knew.

That's not from the Nine Canons, I thought, and my skin seemed to roughen with gooseflesh again. I was secondarily talented as a runewitch, and the runes that made up the acceptable and studied branches of rune magick were mostly instantly-recognizable to me. Most psions have a good working knowledge of the Canons, since runes have been used since before the Awakening, when psionic and magickal power began to be a lot more reliable and a lot stronger in certain talented humans. A rune used for so many years, for so many psions, is a good shortcut when you need a quick and dirty spell effect. Not to mention the Major Works of magick that required perfect performance of drawing, defining, naming, and charging runes.

I reached up with my aching right hand and touched my left shoulder, massaging at the constant cold ache of the demon glyph through my shirt. "Looks like Ceremonial work, the double circle and runes." My eyes moved over the picture. A pile of something wrinkled lay off to one side. "Is that what I think…" Don't. Don't tell me it is.

"The fucker flayed her." Gabe pushed another file at me. My gorge rose, I squeezed it back down. I don't throw up, I reminded myself. I hate throwing up.

I was grateful that thirty years of that habit was hard to break. I scanned the remainder of the second file and handed it to Jace. Then I took the third one.

"This one was last night," Gabe said tightly. "Brace yourself, Danny."

I opened the file and felt all the blood drain from my face.

Gabe watched me, dry-eyed and fierce. Her tension stirred the dust in her office, made it swirl in graceful patterns in the climate-controlled air. This keyed-up, with the sharp powerful scent of Power on her, she smelled like pepper and musk. It wasn't so bad, not like the usual human stink. I'd toyed with the idea of becoming a Tester to keep my hand in, since I could now smell Power and psionic talent instead of just seeing and feeling it with human senses. That sort of work wouldn't give me an adrenaline jag and keep me from thinking, so the application papers still lay on top of my laseprinter, half-finished.

It can't be. I turned to the coroner's report. There it was in black and white, the name of the victim who had been dismembered in the middle of a circle, bones and gristle and muscle torn into unrecognizable shapes, a murder of exceeding savagery all the more chilling because it was done to a psion like me. However shattered and wrecked the body was, there was just enough of her face for me to recognize.

Christabel Moorcock.

A Necromance.

Like me.