Dust City (12 page)

The nixiedust has a synthetic sweetness that sears my throat and fills my lungs until they’re about to pop. I clutch
my ribs and stupidly fight to hold them in. The nixies jeer at me from above. Briny water splashes down in heckling buckets. Then the pain’s gone. The dust is inside me. I look at my paws. They’re normal. I run my fingers over my teeth and skull. No fangs. No horns. My tail is the shaggy frond it’s always been. Nothing’s changed.

Roy yawns, showing off his cartoonish teeth. “Too bad,” he sneers. “Must’ve got the placebo.”

“Gentlemen,” says the cat. His claws beckon. “The starting line, if you please.” He lines us up along a red chalkline on the floor.

“I don’t think the dust worked for me,” I whisper to him. He lines us up along a red chalkline on the floor. Roy takes a spot right on my left side.

He says nothing and with his scythelike claws, he slices away his tacky shirt. Then he drops to all fours and lopes back and forth, cleaving huge divots in the floor. Braids of muscle roll between his shoulders like dough in a mixer.

Up above us, the nixies spume with impatience. “Get on with it!” one of them screams.

“I got money on the big white one,” hisses another. “Don’t let me down!”

The cat steps to the line. Clutched in his arms is an ancient musket. He aims it recklessly upward. “On your mark!” he calls.

We drop to all fours, wound up tight.

“Get ssseeeeet!”

He fires the gun and somehow, miraculously, I’m first off the line, but I’m not out front for long. The black, willowlimbed wolf hurtles past. He looks back over his shoulder and barks at me. Flames and smoke blossom from his mouth.
He’s breathing fire
. I jostle left, caroming against another wolf—who slashes at me with a lizardy tail. I’m thrown offkilter, yelping as my ankle twists inward. More of the pack judders past.

Then comes Roy, tongue slavering between his teeth. His every stride floats for miles. He’s like a bird in flight, whereas I’m a flawed machine, gears grinding and starved for fuel. My ankle grates with every thud of my feet.

By the end of the straightaway, I’m well behind.

But I still have the leader—the flame-spouter, coughing up fireworks—in my sights. The wolf with ram’s horns leaps sideways, clangs off a yellow foundry basin, and butts into the wolf with the crocodile tail, the same one who wrecked my ankle. The two of them ball up, rolling like acrobats. I can hear the cracks of bones breaking. The nixies love it and splash down their cheers.

The heap left by the two broken wolves now blocks the only path. The rest of the runners, unable to swerve, tumble into them. The sudden pile up shunts any hope of getting by. Roy and I are the only ones behind it.

Roy takes the hard way, throwing his head back and howling. He digs his awful claws into the pack and scrabbles over. Hair and flesh tear away under his feet, throwing back
a wake of blood and tissue, spattering my face, stinging my eyes.

And then . . . something happens.

My mind goes soft and dreamy. My thoughts rise up, disembodied, like I’m in two places at once, watching from above while my body keeps going. The pain in my ankle is gone. The crowd noise fades away to nothing, but it isn’t silent. I can still hear the cheers. Every hoot, every bellow, every insult has become its own compact thing.

I can even hear Skinner, miles away on his throne. He’s not cheering. He’s muttering. To himself. Under his breath.

“This is my favorite part.”

All at once, I know what’s happening. It’s the dust. It’s taken its sweet time, but now it’s working. The flaws in my gait are made perfect. My body’s broken machine is now finely tuned and revving with speed.

I reach the heap of moaning, broken wolves, and
I leap.
In every direction I see the slack jaws of a thousand nixies, who are wound-up and thrilled, boiling in their pots. Even from my mind’s far-off place, I can feel the electricity in my muscles, the sudden voltage of anger and fear and adrenaline. I’m working independent of my brain, which is nothing now but a few pounds of sloppy gray cargo. I land like an ember—glowing and weightless and ready to burn.

Not a second too soon.

Skinner’s throne is in sight now. It’s the final leg. Roy and the fire-spitter are neck and neck. I’m gathering speed
behind them. Roy doesn’t waste time. He lunges. There’s a pop and a sizzle as he punctures the leader’s throat, and he doesn’t let up. He sinks his vast canines deep into the flames that flicker and die, doused by a grisly spurting of red. The nixies shriek for it—and they get what they want.

I
want it too. Something’s gone all wrong inside me. Roy’s bloodied teeth make my insides burst with envy. And when his mouth comes away with the remnants of another wolf’s throat, I practically swoon. He spits away the papery skin like garbage and runs and runs. Shoulders and haunches rise and fall. Forepaws and hind legs pound the slats. All the while, the nixies wail, sopping it up.

I’ve almost caught up with Roy. We hammer along in unison. The dust has made me faster than I’ve ever been. I know I can pass him now. Roy knows it, too. He rears up, sprinting as fast as two hind legs will carry him. He swings wildly with his arms and his huge claws bite into me. A sudden pulse electrifies—my cheek, my neck and down my back—but just as suddenly, the pain is gone. It’s the dust, working its magic, fomenting inside me the courage of a lunatic.

Roy falls back on all fours, sprinting with all he has left. An appalling image jumps into my mind—Roy’s fresh heart bursting in my mouth. With a cape of my own blood flapping behind me, it’s my turn to lunge. My teeth go into his belly, latching onto what is inside. His ribs. Roy sucks in an ocean of air as I gnaw into the bone and feel his ribs splitting
between my teeth. I taste his blood and—

It’s over. I’m at the foot of Skinner’s throne. Roy lies somewhere behind me; the right-hand cat stoops over him, wringing his paws.

There’s a twinge in my ankle. The electricity returns to my face and back. The dust, having done its duty, is wearing off. My mind drifts back into my body.

“Impressive,” says Skinner. He clinks down his golden steps. “That’s precisely the sort of
grit
I’m looking for.”

My legs give out, and I sag to the ground. Ten paces behind me is Roy, lying in the very same position. We’re mirroring each other, separated by an invisible barrier: me on one side, Roy on the other, a million miles apart. The only difference between us is that Roy’s not moving.

Skinner comes and stands beside me. He jabs the golden straw behind my ear, and now I’ve got a matching set of two. His gloved hand strokes the hair on my head. It’s humiliating, as if I’m his pet.

“Congratulations,” he says. “You got the job.”

19

FLOPHOUSE

SKINNER VANISHED AFTER THE RACE. HE WAS SPIRITED OFF INSIDE A TIGHT
formation of loyal globs. At least that’s what I remember from before I passed out. When I came to again, the elegant cat was perched on a barrel, ignoring me as I slept.

The refinery was empty. The only thing left were speckles of red on the concrete floor. Roy was gone, too. The stain he left behind was the largest of all. The cat led me out through another tunnel to an underground parking lot.

Which is how I ended up here, packed into the back seat of a long black brougham, apparently just one of several in Skinner’s fleet. Back in the lot, they were lined up like soldiers awaiting commands.

“Can I ask you something?” I say to the cat behind the wheel.

“No,” he says. He keeps his gaze on the road.

It’s a long way to the surface. We spiral up ramp after ramp. It gives you the impression of being in another city,
down below the one you know. A very literal underground economy of crime. A black market of black magic.

The cat’s eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror. Despite his cool demeanor, I take the eye contact as an invitation to speak. He’s a cat after all. When do they acknowledge anyone?

“I guess you know Skinner pretty well.”

He nods, a subtle dip of his chin.

“He’s pretty tough for a little guy, huh?”

Another nod.

“You know what happened to his face?”

“Not just his face.”

That must be why Skinner keeps his shirt buttoned up so high and tight. It’s to hide as much of his body as possible. I can’t help but wince. “What happened to him?”

The cat’s attention returns to the road. Neon lights wash over the windscreen, rinsing Skinner’s brougham in a rainbow of lurid light.

“What about the nixies? You know where their dust comes from?”

The cat hits the brakes. We’re deep in Dockside now, far from the open air of the reservoir. Refineries and warehouses squeeze the car on all sides. The cat throws a languid arm over the passenger seat. In his other paw, he’s got the gun he showed me earlier. “You ask too many questions.”

“I was just—”

“You’re a runner now,” says the cat. “You understand what that means?”

“‘Run’ isn’t exactly the most difficult word in the dictionary.”

The cat shuts his eyes and opens them slowly. “I can kick you out anytime,” he says. “Skinner won’t care. I could tell him you got spooked, changed your mind—just like you told me you did back at the warehouse. I could tell him you jumped out of the car at a traffic light and vanished in the dark.” He scrapes his rough tongue along his lips. “No one will ever hear from you again. That’s because you’ll be at the bottom of the reservoir. We’ll arrange for guppies to swim through your bullet holes. At which point no amount of dust—nixie or otherwise—is gonna bring you back. Is that also something you understand?”

“I think so.”

“Good.” He turns around in his seat. “Now, let’s get you to your new home.”

After driving in silence for a few more minutes, we come upon a building that slouches in every direction. Located on what might have been an elegant if sprawling apartment block once upon a time, the building is now close to disintegration. It looks to be mostly built out of soot, with only a meager patchwork of sheet metal to cover the holes in the brick.

“Welcome to the flophouse,” says the cat, grinning at me for the first time, showing off his fangs.

The foyer is a huge square space, its edges divvied up
by countless corridors and stairways. If the outside was dismal, the inside is worse. The floor angles up and down like a fun house. The ceiling tiles are entirely missing so the lights dangle bare and flickering from exposed wires. Wolves are everywhere: lolling on the floor, swinging from the roof beams, crowded around tables, where even more wolves bark and howl over cards and dice games. As soon as the cat leads me in, the room hushes to a menacing silence.

“Everyone,” says the cat, “this is Henry. He was the winner tonight.”

Nobody speaks. Off in the corner, there’s a small pack of blackhaired wolves. Every one of them frowns at me from around a crooked table, where only a moment ago the dice were clattering freely. One of them scoffs. “
Cheat!
”

“Come along,” says the cat. “You can meet your new friends later.”

He leads me up to the first floor and down a corridor. There’s a hefty door at the end, locked up tight. The cat thumps it with a fist.

“Hey! Got this week’s newbie.”

No response.

The cat pounds again. “Wake up, ya bum!”

There’s a clinking of glass and then the racket of a thousand locks. An old wolf opens the door. He’s the light brown color of dead grass. His paw is draped at his side, loosely clutching a bottle, dregs of a pungent whiskey sloshing at the bottom.

“Fresh meat,” says the cat. “Show him around.”

The wolf shakes his head. His eyes are half-asleep, but in spite of his drunken tilt, there’s a kind of regal bearing to him, his head held high on a ramrod spine. “Put him up in, uh—three-oh-nine.” He sways a little to the left, then braces himself on the door frame. “Orientation’s in the morning, then it’ll be his first run.”

The cat regards the drunken wolf with disdainfully hooded lids. “Whatever you say, Matt.” He looks around at the rotten walls and the dangling fixtures. “You’re the boss around here.”

The wolf grunts and shuts the door. He never even looked at me.

The cat leads me up a few flights of stairs, past numbers haphazardly scrawled on the doors. Three-oh-nine is a windowless cube on the third floor, furnished with a three-legged chair and a bare mattress. No pillow, and only a thin blue sheet. My only consolation is that the mattress is enormous. It looks almost big enough for me to stretch out in full.

The cat watches me from the doorless entryway. “Better get some sleep.” He flashes me an unfriendly smile. “Big day tomorrow.”

I lie in semi-darkness, but it’s impossible to sleep. The mattress reeks of mold, and intermittent howls of laughter rise up through the floorboards. What am I doing here? How am I ever going to get close enough to Skinner to find out
anything at all? And perhaps most importantly, what if my father is completely insane?

No. I know that deep down I want everything he said to be true. I want the fairies to come back. I want my world to be the way it was, once upon a time—even if I can’t remember exactly what that means.

Eventually—in spite of the noise, the smell, the worry—I drift off. But my sleep is as fitful as ever. It isn’t long before the nightmares set in. The trees. The cottage. The little girl. The blood and the bones . . .

20

A MILLION GLITTERING TEETH

SUDDENLY, I’M AWAKE. ALL THE FOLLICLES I’VE GOT—FIFTY BAZILLION OF
them—vibrate like the plucked strings of a symphony (a fugue, no doubt). The room is pitch-black, lonely and empty.

Or not.

I prick up my ears. I can hear shallow breathing. It’s not mine.

A voice I don’t recognize says, “You really toss and turn, don’t you?” It’s somebody young, like me, but I can’t place it. But I can smell him. A wet scent of licorice and foul breath.

“Who are you?”

“Didn’t you hear what Manx said? We’re your new friends.”

There are more of them—four others besides the voice—clinging to the corners of the room like huge, black cobwebs. Suddenly they’re on top of me. Five against one. I lash out against somebody, punching blindly. There’s a yelp, and I’m kicked in the gut. A pillowcase is hitched over my head, and suddenly the enormous bed sheet cocoons me.