Division Zero: Lex De Mortuis (2 page)

The child’s shoulder slipped out as she shrugged it up to the side of her head. Her caramel-hued face hid behind a waterfall of black hair. When she figured the kid was not in a mood to talk, Kirsten adjusted the blanket snug once more and peeked into her surface thoughts. Maia’s voice hid behind the dread of how angry her mother was going to be with her.

“Honey, your mommy is
worried
about you. She is not angry.”

Maia looked up, shivering, whimpering in English. “I don’t wanna ̓member it.”

Kirsten saw it then, in the child’s mind. Vaporous blackness exuded from under the door of a pink bedroom, gliding up along the wall and collecting at the corner of the ceiling. Malice, pure and hateful, rained down out of the mass at a half-awake girl. All she wanted was to get away from it before it killed her.

“Maia?” Kirsten patted her on the hand. “Do you see a man standing next to me, wearing the same black uniform?”

The patrol officer looked at about where he estimated Dorian to be and crept backwards.

The girl furrowed her eyebrows, wondering if this woman was crazy. Kirsten grinned at the face she made.

“You never saw a ghost before?”

Maia shook her head back and forth in an exaggerated gesture, tossing her long hair around. “No, just the one in my room. He’s mean.”

Dorian waved a hand in front of the girl, eliciting no reaction. “The kid isn’t seeing me. Whatever’s in the house is visible to normal people.”

Kirsten sighed. “Yeah, great. A damn wraith, perfect.”

Clank
. The patrol officer knocked something off a table. “What, you Zeroes have categories for this bullshit?”

Sensing the look on Dorian’s face, Kirsten shook her head. “Don’t.” Her gaze switched to the man in blue armor. “Yeah, we do. Please tell me no one went inside?”

“Martinez and Long did a walk-through about ten minutes before you got here; they didn’t find anything. Came out in the middle of a wicked argument about Gee-ball, thought they were gonna get into a fistfight.”

Kirsten ruffled the girl’s hair; the kid’s flat affect did not change. “Aww, come on, Maia. That usually gets me a smile.”

Maia looked down at her lap, shivering.

“She’s terrified,” said Dorian. “If they try to take her back inside, she’ll flip out again. She knows it wants to kill her.”

Kirsten stood, pointing about. “I don’t want anyone attempting to take this girl inside until we get rid of it. She can sense it; she will know when it’s gone. I’ll be the one to go back inside with her when it is safe.”

Dorian flashed a crooked grin. “Wraiths often cause extreme terror in the minds of the innocent. Are you sure
you
want to go in there?”

“Very funny.” She waved the mother over. “I already told you I’m not as innocent as I look.” Kirsten helped the woman into the MedVan. “Maia is worried you’re angry with her; please stay here with her while I handle this.”

As the woman assured Maia she was not in trouble, Kirsten hopped out of the van and nudged the doors closed to keep it warm inside. By the time she had walked halfway up the path to the front door, the entire house seemed to be breathing, and felt as if it stared right through her soul. Kirsten frowned and held her armband terminal up. Shimmering holographic light formed a square panel in midair above it. Her finger swiped through police records. Over the past hundred years, this property was associated with a large number of domestic violence calls and noise complaints, but no major crimes. Kirsten switched to municipal records, finding the a real estate notice almost once every two years, well below market, and had gone long stints being empty.

“Whoever it was is old. Possibly prewar.”

Dorian rubbed a finger over his mouth. “Think it’s some old crotchety bastard with a problem with nonwhites?”

Kirsten blinked. “A racist, seriously? That would make him over three hun”―she shivered―“I don’t want to think about it. Besides, according to what I’m reading here, the manifestation didn’t get along with anyone who lived here.”

Dorian edged closer to the door. “It concerns me the mother didn’t notice.”

Kirsten let her arm fall; the screen folded in on itself and vanished. “It wants her here, probably intended to get into her head and make her…”

“You don’t have to say it.” Dorian simulated a deep breath.

With the image of Maia’s delicate face and sad eyes fixed in her mind, Kirsten stomped over and shoved the door aside. The walls in the living room seethed with black flames, lapping at the ceiling and making the space feel many times colder. She glanced around; a powerful sense of evil soaked through the drywall, water after a flood. Whispers came from beneath the floor, dread from above.

Dorian moved through a dining room area to the kitchen. Kirsten followed. Ethereal vapor spewed from spectral holes around the walls; she brushed her fingers over one, feeling smooth repair.

She teased at the threads of vapor. “Bullets hit the wall here, after killing someone.”

He pointed at a flimsy white door. “Sounds like they’re still down there.”

Her hand clasped the icy, ancient doorknob. Kirsten cringed at the contact, twisting and pushing. Wooden stairs led into the basement, darkness wavering with ghostly light from an unseen source.

“This house is old. Well, at least I know how the woman got it for only four hundred grand.”

“Yeah.” Dorian touched the wall. “Everything else around here is about a million; the cost would be four times that if they extended the wall this far north.”

Kirsten shut her eyes, concentrating. When she opened them, they glowed white. Color had drained out of the world, replaced by a shifting greyscale environment where spectral copies of surfaces and objects wavered and flowed over reality. Division 0 called it Darksight, the power of astral seeing. By opening her perception to the spirit realm, she illuminated the real world with its ethereal shadow. The strongest sense of energy came from the back. She went toward it, following boot prints of blood that existed only on the other side. The trail led into the kitchen.

Dorian pointed at a small doorway in the corner by the pantry. “Basement.”

In the astral, blood and handprints smeared the bare cinderblock walls along the stairway. Kirsten descended into the damp, musty confines of a frozen basement. The unpainted concrete at the bottom rippled with a massive pool of blood. A man in a black windbreaker, emblazoned with DEA in large yellow letters, stood at the bottom with his back to her. The center of the E had a golf-ball-sized hole in it. Beyond him, a dozen Hispanic men writhed on the ground by the far wall. Hands bound behind their backs with plastic zip-ties, each had a bullet wound in the head.

In various degrees of coherence, they protested in Spanish about how they were not informants.

“Well, I can take a guess what our wraith did for a living.” Dorian chuckled.

Kirsten muttered, “Okay, so it’s not a racist old bastard, just a four-hundred-year-old criminal.”

The DEA man turned, giving Kirsten a view of the entry wound responsible for the hole in his back. Blood, long ago gushed from his nose, blackened his mouth and chin. When Kirsten made eye contact, he jumped back.

“I’m sorry.” She held a hand up.

“I’m DEA Agent Fowler.” He shook her hand. “Got these dozen Mexicans rounded up, not sure where Gonsalves got off to. Slippery son of a bitch. Stupid bastards think we’re focusing on Mexico so much they can truck the junk in through Canada.” He looked her up and down, raising an eyebrow at her clingy uniform. “Little early for the guys to send me a stripper; they could have waited for the after-party. The cop costume is cute, though.” He winked, making a clicking noise.

Dorian turned, covering his face to hide his laughter.

“I’m not a stripper.”

Agent Fowler appraised her again, brown caterpillar eyebrows creeping together. “Except for the boots, that getup of yours looks painted on. I don’t recognize your insignia, and the blinking thing on your hip looks like a prop from
Star Trek
.”

“I hate to break it to you, Agent Fowler, but you’re not in command of this operation any more. You’re dead.” She pointed at his wound.

Dorian’s eye appeared through it from behind. “That guy had some heavy artillery, maybe a .50-cal.”

“Dead?” DEA Agent Fowler stuck a finger into his chest. “I can’t be dead, I’m still here.”

“Trust me, pal. You’re as dead as I am,” said Dorian, wandering around front. “Fowler, was this Gonsalves guy known to use a large weapon?”

“Yeah, the tool had a Desert Eagle. He loves his action movies. He’s got it all nickeled up with mother-of-pearl grips, too, real pimp.”

Dorian chuckled. “If memory serves, that’s a .50-caliber. They don’t even manufacture those types of weapons anymore.”

“You’ve been dead probably two or three hundred years.” Kirsten waved her arm through him. “See?”

Fowler stumbled to the side, falling seated on the steps with a look of utter disappointment. He remained quiet for a minute or two, then deflated. “I guess that’s why backup hasn’t shown up. It did kind of feel like they were taking their sweet damn time.”

“What happened here?” Dorian paced the line of executed men.

“We got a tip this house was being used as a relay point for the cartels to ship product into the States. Eduardo Gonsalves, a real piece of work. He went by the street name of El Santo de Sangre. We’d been giving them a big headache down south so they tried to do an end run on moose back.”

Kirsten glanced at the walls. “Guess he lived up to his name. Fowler, you don’t have to stay here. I was wrong about the time; if you remember the US, then you’ve been dead about four hundred years. There’s nothing else you can do.”

“He won’t let us leave,” one of the executed men wailed, in Spanish.

“Who won’t?” Kirsten went over to them, switching to Spanish as well.

A few seemed shocked she could see them.

“The Blood Saint, he thinks we ratted him,” said another man.

“It was his daughter, Naida. He couldn’t believe it, so he killed all of us trying to find the traitor.”

“Yeah.” Fowler wandered over, speaking English, though apparently able to understand them. “Local police got a tip from a little girl, said her daddy did bad things. We came in on a joint operation with them, found a few million worth of coke down here.”

Dorian and Kirsten exchanged a look.

“That’s a lot of soda.” Kirsten shook her head.

Fowler blinked at her. “Guess it’s true what they say about blondes, eh?” He elbowed Dorian with a conspiratorial wink. “Cocaine.”

“The hell is cocaine?” asked Kirsten.

“It was a plant derivative narcotic; closest modern equivalent would be Zone4.” Dorian gestured at the executed men. “The wraith is drawing power from them. I can feel him trying to snare me, too.”

Kirsten closed her eyes, calling out.

Dorian nudged her. “You’re wasting your time.
They
can’t get in here. Gonsalves, or what’s left of him, is too strong. Why do you think these poor idiots are still stuck here? Cartel soldiers? The Harbingers would have been all over them within minutes of their death. Something’s keeping them out and this doesn’t strike me as holy ground.”

“We drag them outside, then?”

Dorian eyed the row of dead men. “Gonsalves is binding them here. I doubt we’d be able to get them out the door.”

A sense of pervasive dread filtered through the wall. All the men stopped muttering. Fowler turned paler. All eyes went to a shadow creeping by the casement window.

Dorian lost his joviality. “Guess they’re still listening to you.”

She exhaled. “Yeah…”

“What was that thing?” Fowler pointed at the window.

“You were DEA?” Dorian chuckled. “Just someone who wants to have a word with you.”

Fowler looked confused.

Kirsten bit her lip. “Right, so, if we can’t drag them outside…”
Damn, he’s gonna be strong.

“You could always destroy them.” Dorian folded his arms. “It would weaken the wraith, but…”

She went up the stairs.

“I know you too well.” Dorian chuckled at her before he pointed at Fowler. “You stay here, don’t do anything. You’ve been exposed to him for too long, he could drain you to boost himself.”

Fowler gulped.

Billowy darkness shrouded the walls and ceiling in the upstairs corridor. Orange-pink light leaked in from an open door caddy-corner to the master bedroom. Kirsten advanced with caution, tuning out the residual manifestations of screams, gunshots, and explosions. The smoke clinging to the walls receded from her advance, as if afraid.

“Sounds like a damn war is going on.”

Dorian chuckled. “Imprints from the DEA raid, I bet.”

Kirsten leaned against the wall, edging up to the first door. “What is DEA?”

“Was. Special branch of law enforcement tasked with combatting illegal drugs.” Dorian took a position in front of the door, as if to rush through after she opened it.

She scrunched her face. “Really? They actually cared enough about people getting high to have special cops for them? Old government had too much money, I guess.”