Haruspex (Marla Mason) (2 page)

She went back inside and found a glossy-coated gray cat, newly dead, behind the counter. She looked at its small pile of pale intestines and tried to read some portent of her arrival in their arrangement. If the guts held any such information, she did not have the understanding required to read it. If killing a cat could warn the killer about her arrival, what did the spilled guts of people tell him? What knowledge did he seek in those slimy, blood-slicked human configurations?

She returned to Juliana’s, brooding.

#

Juliana’s didn’t look right during the day. Being underground, with only narrow, dusty windows set high on the walls, kept it from daylight’s revelations. Its filthy corners remained concealed, but Marla still felt odd walking down unthronged stairs and pushing open the iron-bound door without having to shove through a crowd of stylish clubhoppers. Reduced to simple space, the pillared rooms seemed sacred, temple-like, reminding Marla that this location had served purposes other than hosting a nightclub. Dark purposes, sometimes, and sometimes exalted ones.

“Juliana?” Marla shouted. She wanted Rondeau, but he wouldn’t come if she called.

Someone moaned from the direction of the bar. Marla hesitated at the threshold. She didn’t want to interrupt Juliana in the middle of her ugly delights. Apart from her unwillingness to see such a thing, who knew what consequences would befall Juliana if her act went uncompleted?

“Juliana!” Marla called. “I need to speak to you!”

Another moan, weaker this time, and then Marla caught the smell of ozone, but not the pure scent she associated with the Thrones. Similar, but threaded with a whiff of corruption, like smelling a shark with its belly slit open. She rushed into the bar, holding her cloak like bat’s wings, prepared to reverse it and clothe herself in purple at the slightest threat.

She didn’t find the Belly Killer, but she found his work. Juliana lay behind the bar, shirtless and bloodied, trying to push her intestines back inside. Marla touched Juliana’s forehead, easing her pain, glad she’d left her cloak with the white, benevolent side showing.

“Death,” Juliana whispered, blood spotting her thin lips. Her pupils were huge, nearly obscuring her irises.

“Shh,” Marla said, throwing out mental feelers, searching the bar for the Belly Killer. Her probing couldn’t penetrate the eighth room, of course. Could he be hiding in there? “Is he still here, Juliana?”

“His death,” she said, gesturing at her unspooled insides. “You... He saw...” Her eyes fluttered.

Juliana died. Even a sorcerer in perfect condition would have had a hard time recovering from so grievous a wound, but Juliana had degenerated greatly since her peak, and none of Marla’s small skill with healing could help her.

Marla stood, reversing her cloak with a mental command so the purple showed. Ruthless strength and a desire for violence filled her. She smiled, fear diminishing in a surge of power, hoping she’d find the Belly Killer in the eighth room. Blood and bone, sinew and nerve, vein and flesh -- she’d part it all, and rearrange it to her liking. Marla swept the curtain aside and rushed in.

Rondeau screamed and huddled under the table, covering his head and whimpering. A quick, professional glance assured Marla that no one else occupied the room. Almost regretfully, she reversed her cloak. The dark, maniacal strength left her, and her legs trembled. She didn’t like to wear the color for long. The gleeful rage and capability became addictive.

“Get up, Rondeau,” she said, tired. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

#

“Why didn’t I smell ozone at the shop?” Marla wondered aloud a few minutes later, sipping her drink. Her voice seemed unnaturally loud in the empty nightclub.

Rondeau sat across from her, a plate of cold nachos before him. He stirred a mound of guacamole with a chip, wrinkling his nose. “When I tracked him before, the odor weakened, then faded entirely, after a few minutes. I didn’t see the killing... but I think he only smells like that when he fights. I mean, if anybody smelled that coming, they’d get nervous, right? Even Carlton, and he’s a moron. Was a moron, I mean.”

“It doesn’t make any
sense
.” She tore a napkin in half. “The Thrones watch, that’s all they do. Even if they made a practice of killing people, the killer isn’t one of them, you said he’s just a normal man, and anyway, the smell isn’t quite right. So what’s going on?”

“You said he’s reading the future in the guts. What do you think he sees?”

“I don’t know. I’ll ask before I kill him, though.” She dropped bits of torn napkin into her glass and watched them darken, soaking up water. “We have to find him, Rondeau. And you’re coming with me.”

“Ah.” He cleared his throat. “I can’t.”

“Don’t make me persuade you,” she said, too weary to put much menace in her voice.

“No,” he said hurriedly, “I
can’t
. You see... this place is mine, now. Juliana appointed me her successor.”

Marla stared at him. She hadn’t thought about that, about who would take over custodianship of the eighth room. She’d assumed... Well, not Rondeau, anyway. “Were you lovers?”

“I don’t know that love had anything to do with it. We were close. I can’t leave here.”

Marla nodded glumly. The eighth room’s custodian received certain benefits, most notably job security, but he could only leave the vicinity during the dark of the moon, when the eighth room lost its power for a single night. The custodians were privileged slaves.

She pushed the chair back and stood up. “I’ll go, then.”

“Good luck,” he said, staring down at his chips. Coming to terms with his new position, she thought. He might choose to pass the custodianship on soon. Few people could bear it for long, Juliana being the exception. She’d had only one urge to gratify, and it was one she could obtain perfectly well underground.

Marla trudged through the bar with her head down, passing through several rooms, trying to decide what to do next. She hadn’t heard Artie’s ghost whispering yet, but if she didn’t avenge him soon, he’d begin to plague her.

“Hiya,” someone said. Marla lifted her head, startled, and the smell of ozone and half-digested food hit her like a fist. She staggered, catching a glimpse of pockmarked cheeks and greasy black hair. Her hair stood on end, crackling with sparks, and the strength ran out of her limbs like water from a broken pot.

I’m dead, I’m dead
, she thought, trying to flip her cloak, but her numb mind fumbled the command. Dead, and she’d never know why, or what future the killer would read in her steaming remains.

Blackness came. Then, like bright flashes penetrating her closed eyelids, brilliant geysers of pain.

#

Not waking, she knew, but aware, drifting not in a white space but a dead one, a tuned-out space, the surroundings hissing and newsprint-confetti colored, like static on a television.

Marla thought, with piercing clarity:
Reality is a series of well-tuned channels, every channel a different world, and now I’m between stations.

Her sense of insight faded, replaced by uncertainty. Did the Thrones come from another channel, another universe? Or did they run the television, switching at will?

Perhaps summoned by her thought, presences manifested, coalescing out of the static, focusing and fading as if tuning themselves in, finally hanging before her, substantial.

Thrones. Three of them. Identical, derelict men, with narrow faces and fright-wig hair, dressed in cast-offs: suspenders, untucked flannel shirts, cotton pants fraying at the seams. They hovered, bobbing slightly, electricity crackling around them, eyes wide and luminous. They wore their human bodies badly, unable to conceal the light inside, and seemed indifferent to their own poor fakery. They appeared as humans only as a formality, Marla thought, or perhaps to spare her a dangerous glimpse of their essential shapes.

They spoke in concert, haltingly, not like a trio of Metatrons but like foreigners uncertain of the language: “You... Death... His death...” Repeating Juliana’s last words, and Marla felt a rush or relief so potent as to be nearly orgasmic. This was no vision at all, but a twisted dream, perhaps a last firing of synapses before the Belly Killer finished her off, but even that possibility relieved her, seemed better than facing the Thrones and understanding their words.

Then the Thrones inhaled, together, and spoke clearly, dissolving Marla’s relief. “You must help us. Our agent has slipped from our control. We gave him power, set him to act as our instrument, but instead he kills for his own reasons, lost in madness and vanity.”

Marla stared. The Belly Killer belonged to them? She
would
discover that now, with her guts surely unspooling on Juliana’s floor, revealing a future she’d never see.

“We can only observe your kind until...” A pause, a clicking sound like a bolt sliding shut. “... a later date. We chose a champion to act for us on Earth, since we cannot intervene directly, but he no longer heeds us. Once given, our powers cannot be withdrawn. You must stop him.”

Marla sensed a note of desperation. Did the Thrones report to a higher power? If so, were they trying to cover up their mistake, throw her at the problem, hoping for the best? She tried to say “Piss off” but to her surprise couldn’t make a sound, as if her mouth and tongue didn’t work properly.

The Thrones exchanged glances, understanding her anyway. “You can stop him. If you help us, you will be... absolved.”

A chill rippled through her. The Thrones judged, everyone knew that, it was one of the oldest tenets, a truth mentioned in holy texts so ancient the religions that wrote them were forgotten now. The Thrones judged in life, and after death, there were consequences... but even if she lived, if the Thrones somehow interceded to save her, how could she fight the Belly Killer, if he had such power?

Give me your gift
, she thought greedily.
Then I’ll fight him.

“We cannot trust you,” the Thrones said sternly. “You would use our gift irresponsibly.”

Like the Belly Killer does?

The Thrones didn’t look offended, but their voices held that note of panic again, like teenagers who’d wrecked their father’s car. “Mortals make poorer vessels than we supposed. You lack pure motives. Given strength, our agent killed recklessly. Given the knowledge of divination, he became obsessed, focused on merely personal matters.”

What does he divine? she wondered. Stock market trends? The outcome of horse races?

The Thrones continued, no longer bothering to move their mouths when they spoke, evidently forgetting even so basic a detail of camouflage. “We will give you a small gift. Not strength, not power, but... something.” They flickered, fading out. “Stop him, and we will absolve you.” They blended with the static, finally disappearing entirely.

That’s it? Stop him? She didn’t know how to proceed, how to get back to her body, much less what to do when she got there. The Belly Killer hadn’t left any survivors so far.

The static darkened to black. Then pain, and light.

#

She woke to bloody agony, coming from an unexpected part of her body. Not her stomach, which felt whole, but her face. Music thundered nearby, muffled by thick walls. Night already, then. She’d survived a long time.

She pushed herself up, nearly blind from pain, and saw the eighth room’s gas lamps, and a bloody sheet in the corner, presumably covering Juliana’s remains. Black spots swam before Marla’s eyes like gorged flies.

Rondeau ducked in through the curtain, pulling a dark-skinned young woman in a silver miniskirt after him by the wrist. She seemed half-annoyed and half-bored, until she saw Marla, and then her eyes widened and she covered her mouth.

Marla tried to say Rondeau’s name, but when she moved the muscles to open her mouth nothing happened, her tongue flapping sluglike, heavy and worthless. She looked down at the blood puddling on the concrete floor and moaned, low in her throat.

Her cheeks hung in flaps and her tongue dangled. The Belly Killer had taken her jaw.

Rondeau grabbed her hair and pulled her head back, his face filling her vision.
Dead I’m dead
, she thought, twice in one day, a bad way to go. The dark-skinned girl trembled in the background, hugging herself.

Rondeau plunged a hypodermic needle into Marla’s thigh. She tried to scream, and swallowed blood instead, convulsively.

Rondeau let her head drop, and the drug knocked her out before her forehead hit the floor.

#

Marla woke to a view of the water-spotted ceiling, feeling more irritated than anything else. Why couldn’t she die? Even facing judgment, robbed of her chance for absolution, would be better than this intermittent suffering.

Except she didn’t hurt so badly now. Her jaw ached, a lot, but --

She sat up abruptly, too fast, and her head swam. She leaned against the wall, breathing hard, and touched her chin.

But not
her
chin, she felt that immediately. She had a noticeable cleft in her chin, and yesterday a small cluster of pimples had erupted under her lower lip, and she didn’t feel either of those things. She ran her fingers over her lower teeth and gums, discovering a retainer bar. She’d always had perfect teeth.