Dust City (10 page)

“So there you have it. It can’t be done.”

But Dad shakes his head, the feral craziness taking over again. “But it
can
be done—all they would have to do is break the rules, just once, and I think they would, too. I know they would—I know
Faelynn
would.” He tugs against his chains.
“If
we found them.”

The loudspeaker squawks to life.
“Time’s up, Whelp.”

The guards step forward and begin to unfasten him. “Midnight tomorrow,” he says. “The Woodsman. You can find out what happened. You can find them. Promise me you’ll find some proof.”

I don’t say anything.

“Please, son, promise me.” His mouth tightens around his rotten teeth. “They’ve got Faelynn. She can help us. She can help us both.”

Faelynn. All I’ve got of her are a few smudged memories. A bit of glitter and a song. It’s so much more than what I’ve got of my mother, a wolf I never knew. Could anything my father just told me be true? I can’t believe it. But what if he’s telling the truth and I don’t do anything? Is it really possible I’d be giving up a chance to see my mother again? To change my fate—and hers?

As they’re hauling Dad out of the chair, chains clinking, he says, “Not only for me, son, for Faelynn. And for your mother.”

What can I say to that? What if he’s right?

“Okay,” I say. “I’ll do it.”

16

THE FASTER BEAST

OUTSIDE THE GATES, A DRY HAZE LIES OVER EVERYTHING. I LOPE DOWN THE
incline, sinking step by step into the smog. Tomorrow night I’m going to the Woodsman tavern in Dockside.

Behind me, I hear the prison gates clank open for a vehicle. I prick up my ears, tuning in the tires, squishing quietly over the asphalt. I wait for them to accelerate away, but they don’t. So I pause—and the car slows, slithering up behind me. I keep going and the car does the very same.

I’m being followed.

Suddenly, a stripe of red light sweeps over the ground. It spins clockwise, the silent, revolving light of an unmarked police cruiser. I hear the whir of an electric window.

“Harry Wells?”
It’s a woman’s voice. Sharp and precise. A stab wound. “Here’s a tip. When you pick an alias, choose one that doesn’t have the same initials as your real name.”

Detective White.

Her car is a sleek but well-used coupe, scarred all over with dents and scratches. One of the headlights has been
gouged out. “Folks at St. Remus are anxious to have you back,” she informs me through the open window.

I keep on loping.

“Give it up, Henry. You’re caught.”

I keep going.

“We discovered some, uh—
irregularities
in the office of your pal. The good Doctor Grey.”

That makes me slow down. But I don’t stop.

“So it’s not just the St. Remus folks who want you back. I do, too. I’ve got some questions for you about Doctor Grey’s
alleged
suicide.”

The nearest building is a carpet factory at the bottom of the hill. There’s an empty parking lot beside it. I could bolt, but there’s nowhere to hide. White’s little coupe might be dented, but it’d still be a cinch for her to run me down and leave the questions for when I come out of the coma. She might even start shooting. She’s hardly known for subtlety.

“Get in,” she says. It almost sounds like a friendly invitation. She pops open the passenger-side door. “I don’t have time to chase you around.”

“If you’re busy,” I tell her, “you could just forget you saw me.”

“I’ve never once turned a blind eye.” The diamond-cutter hardness has returned to her voice. “I won’t start today.”

The east end of First Avenue is maybe fifty meters off, straight down. The train line runs along First and then over the Sea Way Bridge. If I could get up there, her car wouldn’t
be able to follow me onto the tracks. On all fours, if I had a diversion, I might make it.

I prick up my ears, tuning in the rumble of a train. It’s well out of earshot. Her hominid ears won’t hear it. Not yet, at least.

“I saw my dad up there,” I tell her.

White doesn’t take her eyes off me. “Family’s important.”

“You’re the one who arrested him.”

“And now I’m arresting you. Like father like son.” She sighs. “Just get in, Henry, I don’t have time for this.”

“What was it like?”

“Huh?”

“When you found him. Tell me what it was like, and then I’ll get in.”

“How’bout I tell you on the way?”

“I want to know now.”

“I’ve taken down guys a helluva lot bigger than you, and I don’t bargain with anyone.” She shakes her head. “Don’t test me.”

“I’m not bargaining. I’m just asking you for a favor.”

The corners of White’s lips flicker. “Fine, but it’s only cuz I can tell you’re not anything like your pop. It’s nice to see, actually. You’re a good cub.”

“That’s what everyone tells me.”

The train’s coming into view, a freight train, headed up from Dockside.

“It was awful,” she says, “if you want to know the truth.
What he did to them. An old lady and a little girl.” She glances back at the prison. “Why would he do that?”

“He doesn’t know why.”

White scoffs. “They never do.”

At the bottom of the hill, the train’s engine is already on the bridge, slowing to a cautious speed.

“Guess we’ll never know what really happened.” White hangs her head. “I hate that.” Her cherry-red lips part slightly, blowing out a breath. Dad is a mystery she can’t solve. It’s as much of a diversion as I’m ever going to get.

I leap forward. One step and I’m down on all fours, lashing my limbs into a gallop. White doesn’t yell after me through the window. There’s no
Hey, stop!
or
Get back here!
or
Why you little!
She merely growls. Then the engine makes a snarl of its own and the chase is on.

I’ve got the edge when it comes to acceleration. White has to fight up through the lower gears, wrenching howl after howl from the car. I hoof it as fast as I can, haunches straining against the fabric of my inside-out uniform. I can hear the threads popping, the seam along my spine beginning to split.

White’s made it up to fourth gear, which makes her coupe the faster beast. Given enough of a straightaway, she would catch me now for sure. There’s only a short distance left to the tracks, though. I still might make it.

But the freight train’s shorter than I anticipated. The final car is nearly here. It’s an old one, rattling and rickety. The slogan on the side—
Nimbus Thaumaturgical ~ Better Living
Through Enchantment
—is barely there, faded and carved up with fractals of rust. The engine has cleared the bridge now. The whole train’s picking up speed. This is my one chance at escape.

But White’s got me.

She pulls up beside my thrashing limbs and eases off, grinning through the open window, wagging a finger. Her dark eyes sparkle with the thrill of the hunt. She turns her head to face the road and floors it, surging ahead to a spot just short of the tracks. Her rear wheels skid out and bring the car parallel to the train, blocking my way. In the same instant, she draws her weapon. The barrel’s perfectly framed in the window.

“Enough.” She says it quietly. “Now get in.”

But I don’t let up. All I can do is hope she meant it when she said I’m a good cub. Maybe that’s enough to keep her from shooting as I use her coupe as the perfect steppingstone. Her mouth goes slack as she watches me leap onto her roof (adding a dent to its collection) and heave off as hard as I can—just as the last car comes clattering past.

There’s a freakish, empty moment as I soar up and up and up. Rusty struts crisscross over the side of the train car and loom closer and closer—plenty to grab hold of. Unfortunately, I ram the wall with such force that the whole thing collapses inward. The word
Enchantment
—barely there to begin with—splinters and tumbles into the shadows of the train car, carrying me along for the ride.

I land on something soft. A great heap of blue fairydust—mined, refined, and on its way to pharmacies all across the city. Only now it’s got an added ingredient: a big bad wolf. I climb up on the sheet of metal and peek out through the ragged me-shaped hole.

Petang!

A bullet cracks off the train. Detective White has started shooting after all. I duck back and then, stupidly, peek out once more. But she doesn’t fire this time. She stands below, getting smaller as the train rumbles north.

“I know you can hear this,” she says, speaking only slightly louder than normal, “so I just want to tell you: That was
very stupid
.” She holsters her gun and climbs back into her car, peeling away in the opposite direction.

I lower myself to sit on the sheet of rust I’ve torn out of the wall. All around, a sea of fairydust shimmers and undulates as if it’s the real ocean, rising and falling like waves. Tides of it seethe around me, drawing in and flowing out. It’s as if it’s examining me, ruminating. Like it’s a living thing.

17

THE PRECISION OF BLOOD SPATTER

AFTER SPENDING ANOTHER NIGHT AND ANOTHER DAY AT SIOBHAN’S HOUSE
waiting for Jack, I made my way down to Dockside in the late evening. I’ve been loitering down here since then, loping along the reservoir, watching the tankers wade past one another, docking, laying anchor, having their innards loaded and unloaded by methodical derricks.

My shoulder’s been throbbing all day long. I injured it when I crashed through the wall of that rusty train car. Gram stitched up my uniform in all the places it was torn, but there are still bloodstains streaking down my arm. It’s less than an hour to midnight. I’ve got my back against the reservoir railing, staring at a neon sign that flickers on and off: T
HE
W
OODSMAN
. I amble across the street.

It’s a consummate dive, sunken one story below the street with a set of concrete steps so murderously steep it may as well be a cliff. There’s a door at the bottom, thickened with hastily applied black paint and propped open with a rock. It suddenly
occurs to me that I’m probably not old enough to be here. But since nobody’s manning the entrance, I walk right in.

The air inside is beery and humid. The room is populated with a handful of the usual suspects: globs, wolves, foxes, dwarves, and ravens, with a few seedy-looking humans tossed in for variety. In one corner, a band of mangy cats plays melancholy jazz.

My eyes search for a trapdoor, a secret tunnel, anything to indicate this place is a portal to an illegal hideaway. But it’s just a sad-looking room full of sad-looking folks. It’s an early indication that my father’s fairy fantasies are nothing but bunk.

The bartender is a thin goblin (a rare trait). Nobody’s ordering anything, so he’s standing there in classic barkeep style: legs akimbo, while polishing a glass. I step up to the bar with false confidence. “I’m here for the, uh . . .” I arch my brow suggestively. “You know.”

“No,” he says. “I don’t.” Surely he can see I’m underage. Then again, maybe I’m big enough to pass. “My guess,” he says, “is that you’re here for a drink.”

“Uh, sure.”

He stares at me, waiting.

“A beer,” I tell him.

The bartender smiles. His tusks are polished and sharp. “Good boy,” he says and a moment later a smudged mug appears, overflowing with foam. I place a five-dollar bill on the lacquered wood, where it soaks up a spill. “Thanks.”

The bartender scoops it up and doesn’t bother with the change. He goes off to the farthest point of the bar and folds his arms, watching me. For a while I sit there, passing the beer between my forepaws and wondering what to do next. None of the other wolves look like runners. They’re mostly old and lame. Eventually, it is ten minutes to midnight, and there’s no point in waiting anymore. I wave the bartender over.

He eyes my untouched pint. “How’bout you start drinking that one before I get you another?”

“I don’t want any more.” I lower my voice and lean over the bar. “I’m here to see Skinner.” If the name means anything to him, his expression doesn’t show it. He blinks at me, slowly—just like a cat. “I’m here to try out,” I tell him. “I’m here to race.”

He shrugs. Again, it’s a practiced, deliberate move. “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

I wonder if this is some sort of a test. If so, I’ve already failed. The condensation on the glass is clamming up the pads of my paws (or maybe it’s just me). “I heard if I came here tonight, I could get a job.”

“Did you now?” The bartender places his hands on the bar. His forearms are veined and ropy.

“I want to be a dust runner, y’know? For the nixies.” I sound like an idiot. An ill-informed one.

“Good for you, but I think I already explained myself amply on this point. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He slides down the bar to serve somebody else—a fox—and I see it’s the same one who tried to sell me dust in the Pine Street alley. Old Jerry. He smiles, showing off his incisors. He raises his glass and it looks like he’s about to say something, when his face goes sour. He sees someone behind me. In the same moment, a huge white paw comes around to pick up my untouched glass of beer.

“If
you’re
not gonna drink it . . .”

It’s Roy Sarlat. I turn around and there he is—larger than life, as always. I can sense everyone in the room staring at us.

He downs the beer with authority, his throat undulating with the mere two swallows it takes him to drain it. He slams the empty glass down. “I needed that,” he says, slapping a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Never thought I’d see you in a place like this, Hank-man. Not in a million years.” He looks absurd in a baggy shirt printed all over with palm trees and sunsets.

“How did you—?”

He opens his mouth wide and laughs loudly, drowning out the sound of everything else, even the mangy music. Then he snaps his jaws into a smile, jamming together his jigsaw teeth. “Whaddaya mean? I’ve escaped from that place
a bunch
of times. Man, it’s easy. You think you’re the only one? They couldn’t care less either way. Nobody cares what happens to us. We’re
wolves
, you and me. Don’t you get it?”