Code Noir (11 page)

The world dimmed. Blackness came through my skull like an axe.

 

 

I came to from the blackout with a dry throat and stilettos tap dancing on my dendrons. I stared up into a face full of Loyl Daac, bent over and prodding at me like I was road kill. A quick glance told me I was tied to a bed.

Not any bed.

His
bed.

‘For freak’s sake let me up,’ I bellowed.

‘You’ve annoyed me again, Parrish.’

He went on before I could spit my thought out. ‘Leesa Tulu is a powerful, respected shaman. She is
my guest
.’

‘Reach into my pants pocket,’ I told him.

He stopped short and stiffened. I
never
gave him invitations like that.

‘It’s not booby-trapped. There is something in there you have to see.’

Cautiously he felt around my pants.

I couldn’t stop an involuntary wriggle. His breath fanned me and his eyelashes were altogether too close for rational thoughts. I forced myself to breathe shallowly, not to get muzzy on his scent, and looked about for my pack. With a tiny wave of relief I saw it dumped by his comm.

Like Jamon’s place . . . my place . . . Daac’s comm cache took up a fair chunk of his room. Unlike mine there was not much room for anything else. A narrow cot in one corner, a tiny cooka and frij and a built-in with no door. Boots, socks and underwear tumbled out on to the floor. I felt embarrassed at the sight of them, like I was spying into his mind.

Finally he stood back.

I risked a glance.

He stared blankly at the crumpled dolls, connected obscenely by their genitals. ‘What - who are they?’

‘You and me. I just came from the Muenos. You ever hear of Dalatto?’

He nodded. ‘Mueno shaman. Doesn’t practise much any more. Bad stuff.’

‘Well she just came out of retirement. Briefly. See, she had a guest too, same one as you got now. Only together they invoked some evil bitch called Marinette who likes flesh to eat. End result: Dalatto disembowelled, tasteless little dolls of you and me in bed together.’

His face tightened. ‘You’re saying Leesa Tulu made these?’

I nodded. ‘Leesa Tulu made these. I just don’t know why. Now untie me and let me get my hands around her throat.’

He hesitated. ‘But she knows where Anna is.’

I took a steadying breath and tried to locate the logic attached to that piece of information.

Dr Anna Schaum, aka Loyl’s most devoted admirer (that’s if you didn’t count the three thousand or so disciples who ate, slept and copulated at his word) and part-time grrl, was the scientist who’d accidentally unlocked the Eskaalim parasite. His precious, pale, pedigreed princess had then panicked and bared her guilt-ridden soul to Io Lang. Lang’d stolen the research and nobody had seen Schaum since.

If Tulu knew where Anna Schaum was, did that mean she knew who was behind Io Lang? Connections met and married in my brain.

‘Have you asked yourself
how
she knows where Anna is?’

He studied me before he answered: liquor-black eyes without a trace of fanaticism in them, warm and drinkable, I’d been suckered by them before. ‘She’s clairvoyant.’

‘Sure. Or maybe she’s just a homicidal liar.’

Mouth grim, he abruptly loosened my bonds. ‘You’d better be wrong, Parrish.’

 

I wasn’t.

Mei’s crew of spiritualists were out cold in an untidy circle around the billy. Too much weedkiller: not enough real
caapi.
If they were communing on a higher plane, I was a . . . a hottie.

Stolowski was gurgling face first in a puddle of blood that I hoped wasn’t his.

I rolled him on to his side and wiped his airways clear while Daac bellowed up the corridor for help. He then tried to rouse Crow-Call.

‘Where’s Mei?’ he demanded.

Crow-Call crawled on to his knees and vomited a little.

I stretched my leg out and poked one of the others with my foot. Jenn or Lila? I didn’t know. ‘Where’s Leesa Tulu?’ I demanded. My voice wasn’t quite steady.

Her eyes stayed closed. ‘N-not sh-shure. S-she put some shit ’n the tea. Said it was g-good for the spirits. Thatsall I ’member,’ she whispered thickly, and drifted out of it again.

Daac hauled Crow-Call upright out of his own sticky mess. ‘Did she force Mei to leave with her?’

Crow-Call made a choking noise and went slack in his grasp.

Dead. Like that.

Overdosed.

Forget the weedkiller, this was something else.

A minute later a couple of medics were on the floor at my feet, working to revive Sto, Jenn and Lila.

I got up and stared at the bones in Crow-Call’s hair, feeling pissed off at the cold injustice. The harmless ones always got it. By turning up here, I’d unwittingly forced Tulu into making a move. Crow-Call had gotten in the way. So had Sto.

Daac wrapped his prosthetic fingers around my wrist like a handcuff. ‘If you know something, Parrish, now’s the time to speak.’

‘Ditto.’

‘I’ve told you all I know.’

‘Friends called by, said their shaman had disappeared. I asked around and it got a few people messily dead for it. When I followed the messy dead trail it led me to Dalatto. The dolls brought me here. I wanted to warn you. Looks like I got bonus points.’

‘Who are you out hunting missing shamans for?’ he asked sharply.

‘I’m not being paid.’ It was true. I was the one paying. Paying off a debt. ‘
Remember
, Loyl, I also have a vested interest in the spirits.’

He unlocked his fingers and I rubbed the circulation back into my arm.

The stench of vomit and blood made me claustrophobic so I moved to the window and watched as his people combed the alleys below. I also couldn’t look at Stolowski lying there grey as death.

Minute later the medics pronounced Jenn a survivor. Lila would live as well, but with brain-fry. Sto was still only a maybe.

I helped stretcher the bodies to the medi-lab and waited until one of Daac’s men came back to report. He narrated a bunch of sightings, and plenty of speculation. I sidled around the edge of the lab as he talked.

Daac’s eyes had begun to kindle with something I hated to see. Fervour. Fanaticism. Mr Mild and Conciliatory had gone walkabout. Mr Sombre and Merciless had come to call.

When somebody messed with Daac’s
gens
, they brought themselves a problem. It was the one thing he and I had in common. Loyalty.

Except mine didn’t depend on racial birthright.

Time to move.
There was only one thing I needed to know and I’d heard straight off. Tulu had Mei with her. And they were headed south-east, towards Dis. I was down on the tenement pavements and running before Loyl could swear.

 

I’d never been as deep in The Tert as Dis, and to tell you the truth I rattled at the thought. I didn’t even know how to get there, exactly, so I set my compass implant to record my movements and altered my direction slightly more east.

All up, The Tert sprawled over a hundred or more klicks from north to south if you could do the straight-line thing. But you couldn’t. Apparently, the closer you got to the centre, the worse the crazies.

Whereas Torley’s, Plastique and even The Slag relied on some outtown trade - it had to be halfway safe for the punters to try and buy - Dis was another story, and, if the rumours were true, another world. I had no idea who lived there or how they survived. Up until now I hadn’t really cared.

I ran on until my chest got heavy and tight. Until my skin slicked with sweat. Then I walked, cooling down, and scried for a half-decent place to eat.

The straps of my pack ate into my shoulders. The darn thing had gotten so heavy and I couldn’t figure out why. I knelt down to rearrange the balance and scared myself half to death.

The forgotten four-and-a-half-pawed canrat was snugged up and dribbling on my spare duds. The shaft of daylight woke it up and it licked its wrinkled chops hopefully.

I tried to dump it out on the pavement but it scrabbled back in, legs working like paddles. I went to grab its neck but it bared its remaining teeth and growled.

I didn’t fancy being bitten by anything quite so fetid, so I closed the flap and ordered shawarmas with extra meat shavings on the side from a vendor on the edge of the tenement spread. Then I found myself a quiet corner to eat.

I set the meat shavings on paper, enticing the canrat out of my pack. It sniffed the air, crawled out to gorge, and in a happy fugue limped off to find water and take a piss.

Relieved of its company, and my guilt, I wandered back to the vendor and bought some damper.

‘You heard of Loyl Daac?’

The woman with grey-streaked hair and studs for eyebrows crinkled her lined face and rolled her eyes. ‘Sure. Who doesn’t round here? He’s one man I’d like a piece of every night.’

I hid a sigh. Did he have that effect on everyone? ‘What’s his story?’

She pointed to a nearby stall. Daac’s face glowed an unflattering tinge of green on a damaged advertible tethered above it. Despite the colour, his presence dazzled. Behind it the tenement walls swore graffitied allegiance to him.

‘Where you from, girlie?’ She wagged a finger at me. ‘That man’s gonna make things how they were here. Give us back what’s ours. Get rid of the filth. Make us healthy people again.’

He could start with her food. But I didn’t like to mention it, seeing as her tongue was loosening.

She leant in close, like I was in her deepest confidence. ‘There’s bad things happening round here now. Shape-changers, bloodsuckers, spirit shit. I hate that spirit shit.’

You and me both
,
hon.

With that off her chest she went back to hacking ragged lumps of meat from a home-made rotisserie. ‘You should get your face fixed. You’d scrub up OK.’

I choked on my mouthful at the beauty advice, and changed the subject. ‘You seen a couple of women? One wearing a coloured skirt, headscarf and face tattoos, the other a chino-grrl in . . . er . . . feathers.’

‘I been asked that twice already. Told them what I’ll tell you. Yes and no. No, I ain’t seen if you can’t pay. Yes, I seen ’em if you can.’ She paused expectantly.

I took the cue. ‘How much?’

‘Three thousand.’

Three thousand. I didn’t even have a quarter of that on hand. ‘You planning on opening a bank?’

Her face closed over. ‘That’s the price of things round here to snoops and strangers. Pay up or go home, girlie.’

I should have shaken the info out of her, but she was on Daac’s turf, one of his protected species, and I had enough to worry about. She’d seen them, there was no doubting that, which meant they were headed in the same direction as me.

As I trudged on, I started thinking about my face. I hated pretty. In fact I loathed all the crap that went with beauty. It didn’t mean I didn’t appreciate it on others. Hell, Loyl was pretty, handsome and gorgeous in one tidy skin.

I just didn’t care to change the way I looked - love me or leave me alone, preferably the last. Most of the time, anyway. Occasionally I caught myself in a princess daydream. Usually I wanted to kick her arse.

Human beauty got in the way of things. Changed things. Muddied people’s minds. More precisely - it fucked with the truth.

On the edge of Tower Town, I heard a sickly mewling behind me. The canrat, unbalanced by his extra foot, was covering twice as much distance as he needed to. He struggled toward me in a roundabout way, copping an occasional sideways kick from passers-by, just for being there.

I guess no one saw a deformed canrat as much of a threat. More like sport.

By the time he got to me his tongue lolled with exhaustion. He flopped across my feet.

Irritated and guilt-ridden again, I picked him up and tossed him into my pack before anyone could see. At least no one knew me here.

Eventually the tenement landscape gave way to the concentric villa mishmash I was used to. Excepting that the thoroughfares narrowed and every way south became a blind alley or a pathway that turned back on to itself.

Too many mods on the buildings. Even the old villa monorail had been wrecked and converted.

Daac’s face haunted me on walls and crummy advertibles and his voice resonated out of villa’s broadcasting Common Net. As I roved in and around, forced more west than I wanted, I saw less transport. Few Pets and no bikes. Only fuel’n’food ’peds. And people.

Gen sets purred constantly. Solar panels glinted dully. This part of The Tert sucked energy in its own fashion from hybrid sources. Only lucky ones like Loyl could afford poached mains power.

I turned my thoughts to Roo. Hopefully he’d gone home with the Mueno contingent.

That got me thinking ’bout Teece.

I found a public comm with a dinged plasma interface and spiked a call to him. He came on quick like he’d been waiting for me.

‘How’s it?’ I asked.

‘I can hardly see you.’

‘Sick comm. Are the Muenos there?’

‘Larry’s not big on chicken blood. Or the prayers.’

I laughed. ‘Sorry, Teece. Knew you could handle it.’

He made a sound like a tiny explosion. ‘
And
you sent Roo back. He said someone had been making mojo dolls of you and some guy.’

‘Loyl.’ I tried not to look sheepish.

‘You with him now?’

‘I’m not
with
Daac now, Teece. But I may run into him again.’

‘What do you mean?’ he demanded.