Gilded Latten Bones

49

I went out the front door like people who can't fly. Singe had armed me up, though my lead-weighted head knocker was the only tool of mayhem obvious. I was feeling less confident than I ought, being fully aware that I hadn't done this stuff for a long time. My skills and instincts had atrophied.

The Dead Man filled my head with an itinerary. And, There will be much to tell once I have had time to reflect. Those things should not have been able to get close. They should not have been able to brush me aside so easily, though it may be a blessing that they did. I cannot imagine the mind of a master vampire being more filled with filth.

Five men representing as many interests had been posted to keep an eye on my place. No doubt they knew about one another. They might have pooled resources. Old Bones wanted a roll call. Men doing similar work had come to grief up by Fire and Ice.

This was nothing I wanted to do. Which might suggest that I was past the point where I should stop doing what Tinnie wanted me to stop doing.

If I couldn't handle the ugliness anymore I should get busy being the neutered door guard I'd seen myself as before this came rumbling down.

Among the Civil Guard, Belinda's friends, a guy from Morley's crew and one from the Children of the Light, I found six of the five people Old Bones claimed were watching. John Stretch's guys nabbed the extra.

First was a red top right across the street. He was uninjured but his mind had gone blank. Which was the story over and over. The last man, a tin whistle posted on the steps to Mrs. Cardonlos' house, was awake but deeply confused.

I found one dead man, a door up the street from my place. Nobody knew him. Probably an unlucky guy who thought he'd found a nice place to spend a homeless night.

I approached the Cardonlos homestead, wakened the widow. She pretended that I was disturbing her rest with my assault on her door. She had not aged well and had not handled that well. She had become a cosmetics huckster's dream, a younger man's nightmare, and an object of derision for attractive younger women.

I've seen so many like her that I suspected a disease strikes women of a certain age. Badly colored hair. Makeup laid on with a trowel. Perfume dense as a swamp's miasma. And a ready, pathetic simper for any man young enough to remember what it's like to stand upright.

She did not simper at me. She recognized me. "It's started, hasn't it?"

"Excuse me? What's started?"

"The death of tranquility." She freighted that with omen, like she was proclaiming the twilight of the gods. "There hasn't been any trouble here since you followed your trollop up the Hill."

She didn't have that right. My trollop was actually a lady. And she had nothing to do with the Hill. "I'm back. You should petition the Director to put you back on full time. Meantime, he needs to know what happened tonight. All his people were hurt. One man died. He'll recall what happened on the north side."

Mrs. Cardonlos gulped some air. She wanted to make that all my fault but didn't know how.

I pointed. "That one down there has lost his hearing."

The veteran lady gulped again. "The excitement is back."

"Get word to the Al-Khar. I'll be busy getting the casualties together and trying to help them." Extra info she could include in her report, to encourage a quick response.

Relway would want his troops exposed to the Dead Man as briefly as possible.