Code Noir (10 page)

Jaw tight.

Motionless.

Pas had backed into a corner, trying not to cower.

With further effort I loosened my grip on the wire and fumbled it away. Minna appeared from nowhere, producing a rag to bind my hand.

‘Thank you for sparing my husband,’ she whispered.

Sick realisation dawned on me - how close I’d just come to killing Pas. Slitting his throat in front of Roo and his woman.

I snatched the cloth from her hands. ‘Go home,’ I ordered her hoarsely. ‘Roo, go back to Teece.’

I turned to Pas, a worthless apology caught in my throat. ‘Burn this place before I get back. Understand?’

He nodded, a tiny frightened movement.

‘If you find anything about her, call Teece.’

Then, crawling with self-loathing, I ran.

 

Running has always been my way. In the ’burbs when I was younger and Kevin tried to touch me - before I grew big enough to dust him - I’d run.

On occasions when Jamon was still alive I’d done it as well. It evaporated the fear and the anger. I felt solid when I ran. Doubt banished.

But it never lasted.

Soon my breath rasped like grit against my lungs. I stumbled frequently in the dirty dark of The Slag, pushing myself until my muscles trembled with fatigue and my chest burned.

I dropped to a walk long enough to ease the worst of the pain then I ran again, oblivious to the scrutiny of pavement shadows and pitiless eyes. Uncaring that word of my flight passed before me.

In the grey dawn I huddled, exhausted, under some rusted stairs, sharing seclusion with a mound of used derms and an injured canrat.

Canrats lived on the roofs, mainly, but this one had an extra spur on one leg - like a half-formed foot. It dribbled as well, a foul-smelling acid much worse than the average dog breath. Its coat had rubbed off in patches, leaving a kind of chessboard pattern of scabby pink flesh and attic-stained fur.

‘You need a change of diet,’ I advised it. I was shaking now, with fatigue and shock and general shittiness.

It coughed and growled a bit. Nothing serious.

We camped together until the smell of pastry dragged me out to a food stall. Curious, the vendor took my cred spike and rolled it around in his fingers.

‘Just gimme the food. The cred is good.’

He checked it and served me, and I retreated back to the hideyhole with a wrapper full of hot lumps of sugary dough. By the third lump I couldn’t stand the dribbling. I tossed the cripple some dough. I was no fan of canrats - the Wombat knows I’d killed The Big One - but I was still a sucker for defenceless creatures.
Hungry
, defenceless creatures - even worse.

Hunger distorts.

The canrat gobbled deliriously, then settled its miserable body with a small lick to its two and a half front paws and sighed. I saw the tremor of improved blood sugar. Knew it well.

‘You’re in bad shape,’ I said out loud.

It twitched a tired ear.

I crouched, watching it doze, letting the pastry weigh in my gut, and thought over my next move. I was on the edge of Tower Town, Daac’s patch. If Leesa Tulu was carving up bodies and making voodoo dolls of Daac and me in bed, he or Mei would be the next logical ones to know something.

Going there would also give me a chance to see if Stolowski was doing OK.

Call it abundant maternal instinct!

Yet the idea of talking to Daac made me feel almost as awful as discovering I’d tried to kill Pas.

Almost.

There was also a small, treacherous part that thrilled at the thought.

I sighed. I didn’t trust many people. Now I couldn’t even trust myself. It gave me a sudden glimpse into complete paranoia, and I locked it up quick and hard.

I hitched my pack on my back. The canrat woke with a start and, seeing its meal ticket about to bunk out, whimpered.

No longer questioning my sanity - it was way,
way
gone - I shovelled the creature into my pack and strapped it shut.

 

Daac’s people began tracking me as soon as I left the gaudy Mueno rugs and stink of mesa spice behind. His patch was a portion of The Tert where the villas ceased to run in concentric semicircles and stood in rows like tenements. Tower Town. Inside the buildings most of the walls were smashed down to give space to large collective rooms, biz and one well-equipped medi-lab.

Stolowski Ree and Mei Sheong had a tiny pied-à-terre in amongst it all. A place where she sat on the window ledge like a disdainful feline, sniffing her incense, sipping psylocybin tea and being worshipped by Sto.

Some women don’t know a good thing when it lived with them.

Sto would die for her.

But Mei . . . looked after Mei. And when
he
wanted it . . . Loyl Daac.

My escorts picked me up a few steps into the tenements. Without speaking, I let them steer me in and out of conjoined buildings until a long stair climb clued me to where I was being taken.

Daac waited for me on the roof, amongst the sleeper cocoons and mic dishes. The view from the top was something I didn’t get to see very often, filthy and beautiful in one sweep of the eye. At midday the sky promised blue and delivered less. In the far west the sea slubbed grey along the coastline; to the east, the oily brown sliver of the Filder River was a more tenuous landmark, its poisons eating into the side of The Tert.

Daac like to come up here, a legacy from his days as press-ganged labour out on the Bitter Plains. It might have seemed like claustrophobia but for Daac it was a reminder of why he was on a one-man crusade to bring The Tert back to its rightful ownership.

His
gens.

His place.

He had a databank of bloodlines longer than the Filder. They were the ones who would triumph. According to
his
plan. Now the register was in my possession and he wanted it back. I just as surely wanted to keep it as a safeguard. What you might call precarious negotiating ground.

I squinted into the sun, tense and aware that I stank with stale exertion, and located him standing close to the edge of the roof as if he might walk off into the air.

He probably thought he could.

Of course one little push and . . . the snipers that guarded him from all points of the compass would turn me into a sieve. I could have scried them out but I didn’t bother. I wasn’t going to kill Daac. Not right now, anyway.

‘Parrish?’

‘Loyl?’

He turned and my gut flipped about like a suffocating blowfish. How did he do that to me? Was it the ’zine cover face? Or the too-white teeth? Or the smooth, dark skin? Or the restless energy that crackled around him?

Or maybe it was that damn evening in Viva when he’d barely needed to pleasure me. A few simple caresses and I’d prematurely orgasmed and he’d walked away from me knowing my barefaced desire for him. Body chemistry sucked. The memory sent flushes across my skin.

‘You’ve got something of mine. Did you bring it?’ He didn’t smile.

I shook my head. ‘I think it’s safer with me.’

A dark flush of anger warmed his skin and I rushed on, not wanting to send him too crazy straight off.

‘Actually, I’ve come to talk,’ I said. ‘We may have a problem.’

‘We? There will never be a
we
while you keep what is mine.’

I gave him a deceptively airy smile. ‘And
I
will destroy your bloodlines register if you don’t listen.’

OK. OK, so much for no antagonism.

He became dangerously still. ‘Come, stand over here, Parrish.’

The roof looked rotten and splintered near his feet. I doubted it would bear our combined weight.

‘What in this universe makes you think I would do that?’

‘Don’t you trust me?’ he asked.

Never!
‘It depends.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘On?’

‘What’s in it for you.’

We eyed each other.

‘But I can see you’re not interested in what I’ve learned. So I guess I’ll just go then,’ I said.

I didn’t wait for his reply, but retraced my steps down into the building. If that didn’t get him talking to me then nothing would.

I went looking for Stolowski, giving my provocation time to boil.

My two escorts tagged along with me. From their faintly awed expressions, I guessed they’d got the gist of my conversation. I doubted anyone round here
ever
stuck it to the boss.

I strode up and down levels and in an out of doors, acting like I owned the place - until I found a room I recognised.

Medilab! Last time I’d been in there, Sto was in it recovering from exhaustion, dehydration and sore feet on account of me dragging him halfway around The Tert with no shoes.

‘I’m in real estate. Looking for an apartment,’ I told the lab’s door guards. I let my hands fall meaningfully to my holsters.

One of them aimed a semi-auto at my chest. ‘Cute,’ he said.

‘Your boss won’t be too happy about you blowing me out the side of the building. I’ve got something precious of his. Check with him.’

The door guards exchanged uncertain looks with the trailing escort. Somewhere in the silent communing they agreed not to kill me.

I strolled on through without a quiver.

The lab had gotten larger. More internal walls demolished. Now it took up most of the floor. Before I got to even twiddle a test tube, Daac burst in.

‘Parrish!’ His warning rang clear as the Vivacity water. ‘Don’t touch anything.’

‘See you’ve got all the comforts of home,’ I said innocently.

‘Out!’

I shrugged and shouldered past him into the corridor. He hussled along behind, breathing down my collar.

‘Whatever you want to say, make it quick. I have guests,’ he said.

Guests, eh?
I heard some chanting from down the corridor on the other side and started to walk towards it.

‘You can’t go in there.’

Can’t go?
Bad choice of words.

He might have been stronger and prettier than me but I was quicker in a straight line, and a whirlwind down a dim passage. I’d run the few steps, shoved the door wide open and inhaled the pungent smell of mushroom tea before he could swallow.

Shaman Mei was in session wrapped in a coat of many-fingered feathers.

I thought it a better look than her usual fluoro hiphuggers and high heels, until she casually shrugged it off on to the floor. Underneath it she was smeared in paint and oils and clothed only in a pair of grubby, woven sandals. Dimply butt, hard nipples and knowing smile.

She stared at me and snorted with laughter. ‘Your jacket get a fright?’

I scanned the room, resisting the urge to reach out and smooth the crinked and curling edges of the leather fringe.

Stolowski squatted next to her alongside two scrawny
femmes
about Mei’s age and a guy with long, beaded and boned plaits.

Against the window frame stood another
femme
- windows in the tenements, unlike the rest of the villas, still functioned - clad in a crimson headscarf, faded gypsy skirt over pants and scuffed combat boots. A spell pouch hung from her waist. Expensive face tattoos and a load of dangerous jewellery completed the effect. Deceptively fleshy, I decided. She could move quickly when she needed to.

She stared outside, shoulders slumped like the weight of her thoughts was crushing them.

I had a compulsion to see her face and stepped closer, stopping just short of Mei.

She, Sto and the young ones faced each other over a portable burner and blackened pan. The guy toked on something that smelt like weedkiller.

‘Hi, Parrish. Good to see you.’ Sto gave me a genuine smile.

I returned it in kind. I had a more than sizeable soft spot for him.

The
femme
by the window stiffened at the sound of my name and turned.

‘Those visions driving you crazy yet?’ asked Mei.

‘No more than everything else.’ I scowled, feeling the parasite stir inside. Maybe it remembered her attack. ‘You got yourself some new friends, Mei?’

Daac stepped up close behind me, uneven breath like he had a case of dirty sparkplugs.

‘Jenn, Lila and Crow-Call,’ Mei said curtly.

Crow-Call gave a lop-sided, cheerful grin, wagging his finger. ‘Heard all about you, babe. They say you gotta a bad
rep-u-tay-shun
.’

He was kinda cute, which stopped me from cuffing him. An innocent like Sto.

‘You forgot someone,’ I said.

The
femme
at the window stared openly at me now. The line of her body, the way she held herself, made me antsy - a don’t-fuck-with-me aura. I recognised it as easily as if she was wearing my face.

Mei picked up that we were facing off. But then Mei picked up on everything.

‘Leesa Tulu,’ said Mei. ‘Meet Parrish Plessis.’

Tulu!
The name was like a blow to my body.

In three large steps I crossed the floor and knocked her flat, my knees pinning her chest. Her head banged down hard, but not hard enough to knock the malice and the tiniest sliver of satisfaction from her face. The woman was pleased to see me - in the ugliest kind of way.

In my cornersight Loyl lurched forward, the door guards took aim, and Mei pulled a knife.

I didn’t care. This woman was stealing shamans and making voodoo dolls of me and I wanted to know why.

‘The muscle you sent after me was damn cheap. And the coffin . . . was way too small,’ I said.

She gave me a smile - the kind that froze your heart and then smashed it with a sledgehammer. With startling strength she wrenched one arm free and gestured a violent sigla in the air. Her face contorted hideously. Eyes bulging, top lip curled back.

‘
Orisa!
’ she spat.