Brown River Queen (26 page)

By then I’d managed to shove my way nearly there. I was close enough to hear the two men the corpse had grabbed start screaming, close enough to see them stumble to their feet, clawing at their own eyes, charging headlong into the crowd.

The dead man rose, laid his hands on the chest of the man nearest him.
 

That man too began screaming.

Then the screaming man took up a fork and put out his own eyes.

I threw someone aside and took careful aim and put all six rounds square in the dead man’s chest.

I might as well have tossed roses. He opened his mouth and made a wet burbling noise and came stomping toward me.

My gunfire had at least scattered the crowd. I backed away at a quick walk, waving my arms and keeping the blind corpse moving toward me. I figured I had a good twenty feet of floor before my back found the wall.

I hadn’t figured on an overturned chair. I tripped over the damned thing, dropped my fresh slugs, nearly let the corpse lay a cold white hand on me before I managed to scramble up and scamper away.

Darla appeared, guns blazing. Her shots had no more effect than mine.
 

I drew Toadsticker. Before I could swing him, a dozen halfdead sailed down the stairs, and twice that poured out of the shadows behind us.

They fell on the dead man like furious crows, silver blades flashing. I saw him grab, saw him take hold a few times, but the halfdead just shrugged him off and kept hacking.

Their blows had far less effect than they should have. Swords broke. Crossbow bolts barely penetrated the dead man’s loose skin—until the Regent’s creature entered the fray.

She didn’t charge in. She didn’t even rush. She strolled up to the dead man, plucked a pair of halfdead out of his grasp and cast them away. When the walking corpse laid his hands upon her, she simply took hold of his wrists and held them still.

The ring of halfdead closed in, blades flashing. Where a moment ago their swords had been useless, now they bit deep. Thick black blood flew.

It didn’t take long. Darla turned away. I loaded my gun and put it in my pocket and joined the ring of halfdead at the corpse.

The pieces still twitched and struggled. The mouth worked, teeth clacking, white tongue testing the air like some blind damp worm. The hands still tried to crawl and clench into fists, though each was pinned to the deck with a fine silver blade.

Small groups of halfdead managed to push the gamblers who’d been touched against the floor. All but one writhed and bellowed. Blood pooled under the still man, black in the dim light.

“Boy,” said Mama Hog, who came stamping up behind me, her infamous meat cleaver in one hand and a red-tipped fire poker in the other. “Boy, that wand-waver needs you, right now.”

I didn’t have to ask. A dozen halfdead nodded and broke ranks, flanking me and Mama without a word or a sound.

Stitches was standing near the stage, her metal-vaned staff glowing in her hands. Darla was beside her, guns drawn.

Do not
come near. Sorcery is at work here.

I approached to stand by Darla. Mama stomped up as well, keeping the hot end of her poker in constant motion.

“What the hell?”

Things looked almost normal, at first. Couples were dancing, some in the decadent modern style made recently popular by a finder and his wife, some in the formal bows and turns of an Old Kingdom dance.

The casino was largely empty. The appearance of the walking dead has a tendency to clear a room. But these people danced, and danced, and from the looks of horror on their faces, and the way their jaws worked—trying to scream—it was obvious they were being compelled to dance.

“Dammit, tell the musicians to stop,” I said.

“They can’t,” said Darla. “None of them can.”

A woman twirled past, her arms raised, her feet moving in perfect time to the waltz. She should have been smiling.

She was trying to cry out.

A man rushed up to her, shouting and pleading. He stood in her way and she knocked him aside. He tried to grab her, to pick her up and carry her away, but even with her feet off the floor, she continued to spin and twirl, dragging him with her.

He kept shouting, calling her name. In desperation, he reached up and took her hands.

As soon as they joined hands, he stopped shouting. His feet began to move in time with hers. He tried to speak but couldn’t open his mouth.

His eyes lost focus.

They twirled silently away, and were gone.

“It’s a geas,” said Mama. She spat. “Damn, these here people is liable to dance ’til they’re dancin’ on nubs.”

A woman brushed past us and joined the dancers in a jerky, tortured path across the floor, her hand held up to a partner who wasn’t there.

More are being called. I cannot stop it.

I took Darla’s hand, motioned to Stitches. “Would something like this need a hexed object?”

Damned if I know.

I spied something on an empty table just beyond the range of the dancers and took a couple of steps to get a better look.

A small ornate chest, all brass and dark wood, sat on the table. Atop it, two tiny dancers spun in an endless circle.

“Stitches. Do you see that?”

Before Stitches could reply, Mama trundled past me. She brought her poker down on the music box with a wild yell.

The mechanical dancers danced on, unbroken.

Mama howled and swung her poker sideways. It struck the music box with a clang and bounced out of Mama’s hand, leaving the box intact and in place.

Mama hacked away with her cleaver, which raised sparks and left deep gouges in the table but couldn’t land a solid blow on the music box. Mama cussed and adopted a two-handed stance that probably would have decapitated Trolls but merely left her huffing and puffing as she circled the music box, swinging.

Stitches marched up beside Mama and brought her staff down hard on the clockwork dancers. There was a crack of thunder and Mama stepped back, still wheezing and puffing.

The tiny dancers danced on, unharmed.

This artifact must be summer-born.
Stitches backed away from it.
I advise keeping your distance.

“Markhat.” I turned, recognizing the voice and having no idea how the Regent had come to stand beside me. “The huldra. Give it to her.”

His creature oozed up, smiling at me, her right hand outstretched. It should have been covered in blood. There wasn’t a drop to be seen.

I hauled the false huldra out of my pocket and handed it to her.

She took it. We touched, just for an instant, and I had to fight not to jerk my hand back. Touching her was touching something far, far colder than the coldest winter ice.

She held the huldra in her right hand. Black talons emerged from her fingers, a tiny drop of venom glistening at the tip of each. She squeezed her hand, and one by one her talons penetrated the black wax that sealed the false huldra’s tortoise shell.

When her talons were buried in the wax, she closed her eyes, threw back her head, and howled, writhing like a devil right out of the Book.

“Damn,” said Mama, summing up my emotions quite well.

It straightened, opened its eyes, and pushed the huldra back toward me, its talons withdrawn. I thought about the venom and snatched up a discarded linen napkin and shoved the damned thing back in my pocket.

About us, men rendered mad by a walking corpse’s touch, screamed. Dancers in the grip of a deadly spell moved, pirouetting and spinning and swaying, their eyes wide with terror. Gunshots rang out sporadically—
pop pop pop
—and I heard wood splinter off in the dark.

“I believe I shall retire for the evening,” said the Regent. He offered his creature his arm, and she took it, still smiling that deadly small smile.

They walked through the dancers, untouched.

Stitches pulled me and Darla away from the music box.

I am unable to determine its method of selection,
she began.
But given time—

Screams arose from our right, and a small band of revelers who had taken refuge behind a makeshift barricade of tables and gambling machines broke into sudden panicked flight past us.

Mama cussed and raised her cleaver. Stitches spun her staff, causing it to shine a bright blood red and emit a high-pitched whine.
 

Evis moved to stand at my side. He held an enormous double-barreled rifle, to which a light was attached. He aimed it toward the far wall.

I squinted, but saw nothing save for shadow.
 

Mama Hog followed the light too, and cussed.

“Don’t look,” she shrieked. “Don’t nobody look!”

I looked. It was just a shadow in a roomful of shadows. Darker, perhaps.

Deeper.

My mother appeared, in the same threadbare apron she’d worn, I supposed, every day of her life.

She waved and smiled. I’d taken a step before I realized what I was doing, before I remembered burying Mom in a poor man’s boneyard on a rainy day in winter.

Mama stamped hard on my foot.

“Dammit, I told you not to look!”

I turned away, more angry than afraid.

Darla turned to face me, tears in her eyes. I’ve never asked who she saw. She’s never told.
 

Screams sounded. I glanced that way, saw a man in an old Army dress uniform being dragged into the shadow by a dozen pairs of emaciated hands.

When he reached the place where the wall should have been, his screams simply ceased, and we faced nothing but shadow once again.

An ethereal interface,
said Stitches.
One born of blood sacrifice.

“What the hell? I don’t see any corpses.”

I too am puzzled. But I estimate at least ten deaths would be required to commence the process.

I groaned. “Would they have to take place all at once?”

No. But we have not had ten fatalities all evening, by my count.

“The accidents during the
Queen’s
construction. The curse. Damned if it wasn’t a curse after all.”

Our internal investigation revealed no foul play in any of the accidents.

“We can ponder that later.” Evis motioned toward the shadow. “If it’s what I think it is, where does it lead?”

“Leads to Hell itself,” muttered Mama. She charged suddenly toward the shadow, tackling a woman in waiter’s garb before she could get close.
 

I joined her, dragging the woman back though she fought and begged.

Darla threw a glass of water in the woman’s face when we wrestled her back to the stage. Evis ordered a pair of halfdead to take her to her room.

“The other corpse,” I managed, winded after my struggle with the woman. “She’ll probably rise too.”

“Already has,” replied Evis, who kept his eyes on the shadow. “Guards heard her banging around in the closet where they’d stashed the body.”

“They go nuts too?”

Evis shook his head. “Hardly. They nailed the door shut without opening it. They knew dead when they saw it.”

“Bright lads.”

Evis nodded. “What do you think would happen if I laid this rifle barrel right against that music box and pulled the trigger?”

“Not a damned thing.”

Evis sighed. “I hate it when you’re right, Markhat. Didn’t scratch the thing. Got any ideas?”

“One crisis at a time.” I gestured toward the shadow. “What about putting a dozen of your men in a half circle around that with their backs to it? To keep people from wandering too close?”

He barked orders. Halfdead took their places, horror at their backs. If any of them were fearful they didn’t let it show.

One drunk wobbled up, shouting to someone only he could see and trying to sidle past. He got a rifle butt to his face for his trouble. A waiter grabbed him by one leg and dragged him off to safety.

I caught Darla staring at the shadowed place again. “No,” she said before I could ask the question. “I’m not looking into it. Just at it. And honey, I believe it’s getting larger, by the minute.”

Evis glanced at Stitches. “Is it?”

Stitches aimed her glass staff that way. The metal vanes whirled.

Yes. Its boundaries are moving. I may be able to slow it down. But I cannot halt its expansion entirely.

A bony hand emerged from the dark, groping blindly about. Another joined it, grasping at empty air with fingers that dropped flakes of desiccated flesh.

Stitches hurled a sizzling arc of crackling light full into the shadow, right over the heads of the Avalante soldiers. The skeletal hands withdrew but the darkness remained.

One of Evis’s halfdead soldiers broke from his post about the shadow, walking jerkily toward us, as though injured or ill. His rifle fell from his grasp as he drew near.

“Damn,” said Mama. “Didn’t think I’d see no halfdead get called to dance.”