Human for a Day (9781101552391) (20 page)

The carrion cloud had moved away and was slowly heading deeper into the alley. I stared at it for several moments because something seemed strange about the cloud, about the whole alley, really. Everything appeared sharper, colors richer, lines more distinct. It was like I'd been viewing the alley through a hazy sheen that had been lifted, and now I could see it clearly.

As a zombie I don't need to breathe unless I want to speak, but right then I inhaled through my nostrils, and instantly regretted it as stench so thick you could take a bite out of it burned my nasal passages like acid. I was wracked by a sudden coughing fit so violent that I ended up retching, and if there'd been anything in my stomach to bring up, I'd have spilled it onto the alley floor and added to the noxious muck coating the ground.

After a few moments, my coughing fit subsided, and I rose to my feet. My body moved with unaccustomed ease, and I felt so unbalanced that I nearly fell. I reached out to place a hand against the wall to steady myself, and I gasped as my flesh came in contact with brick. It felt cold and rough and solid, and the sensation was so intense that for a several seconds all I could do was gently rub my fingers against the brick and marvel at how it felt. It was then that I knew for sure that the coin's magic had done its job. I was alive again.

Magic isn't uncommon by any means in Nekropolis, but magic
this
powerful was rare indeed. The coin had once belonged to Charon, the ferryman who carried spirits to the afterlife in Greek mythology. It had been given to me by Lord Edrigu, master of the dead, as a reward for a service I'd performed for him. The coin could restore the dead to life for a period of twenty-four hours, but it was a one-time offer. Once the coin's magic was spent, the holder could never be granted life again, not from
any
source. So I was human again, and the clock was ticking.

Keeping one hand on the wall to maintain my balance, and trying to breathe shallowly so the stench of the alley wouldn't induce another round of coughing, I reached into my jacket pocket and removed my hand vox and dialed Devona. Like a lot of homegrown machines in Nekropolis, voxes are flesh-tech, devices fashioned from organic material, and now that the nerves in my hands functioned normally, I was repelled by the warm, soft feel of the vox. I could feel it throbbing gently, as if blood circulated through it, and I felt an impulse to drop the damned thing. But I held onto it and waited for Devona to pick up. But she didn't. Instead, I got her voicemail.

“
This is Devona Kanti, owner and proprietor of the Midnight Watch. I
'
m sorry to miss your call. Please leave your number, and I
'
ll call you back as soon as I
'
m able.
”

Once the vox's tiny mouth was finished recreating the sound of Devona's voice, it said, “Beep!” The vox's mouth exhaled gently as it spoke, and the feeling of its warm breath on my ear made me shudder.

“It's me. I had to use Charon's Coin. I'll explain later, but I'm human now, and I'm on my way home.”

I disconnected and tucked the vox back into my suit jacket, glad to be rid of the thing. Devona was my partner, both personally and professionally. Normally she'd have come with me to Ruination Row to help search for the Silversmith, but she was a security expert, specializing in both the mundane and mystical aspects of the craft, and today she was helping to overhaul the wardspells for Diamonds are a Ghoul's Best Friend, one of the largest jewelers in the city. It was a huge account, and landing it had been quite a coup for her business. She was determined to do an excellent job for her new client, and I knew from experience that, like me, once she got her teeth into a job, she didn't let go until it was finished. So it was no surprise that she hadn't picked up when I called. She'd no doubt set her vox to silent mode, but she'd get my message eventually. And once she did, I knew she'd be thrilled.

Devona and I had been together for a while now, and she longed to start a family. But as a zombie, I'm not exactly fully functional in certain key anatomical areas, if you know what I mean. Hard to father a child when there's no lead in your undead pencil. Another problem is that Devona is half vampire, half human. Normally her kind is sterile, like mules back on Earth. But with twenty-four hours of human life granted to me—along with the aid of a fertility charm created by Papa Chatha, the houngan who provided my preservative spells—we had a chance to conceive a child. But though I'd had Charon's Coin in my possession for a while now, I'd been hesitant to use it, and I'd only done so now in order to avoid becoming a meal for several thousand hungry imp larvae. So even though I'd just called Devona and told her I was headed home, I had mixed feelings about it.

It wasn't that I didn't want to have children. I just wasn't sure that Nekropolis was the best environment to raise them in. Four hundred years ago, Earth's Darkfolk—vampires, shapeshifters, magic-users, demons, and the like—had decided they'd had enough of humanity and emigrated to another dimension where they built a vast city called Nekropolis. Here they could live openly, without the need to remain concealed from the humans who were increasingly outnumbering them. But as you might imagine for a city filled with monsters, Nekropolis can be an extremely dangerous place, and the idea of bringing innocent new life into this world made me uncomfortable, to say the least.

Devona and I weren't even sure
what
our child might be. She was half human, and I'd be all human when we conceived our baby. As best as Papa Chatha could figure, that meant there was an excellent chance our child would be completely human, or close enough to it. Some humans did live in Nekropolis. The Darkfolk maintained magical passageways that led back to Earth, mostly so they could continue to import goods and services, and a number of humans found their way here every year. That was how I'd originally come to the city, chasing a warlock who'd committed a series a murders in my hometown of Cleveland.

According to the laws of the Darkfolk, it's forbidden to prey upon humans, but so many of the Darkfolk are predators by nature, and they consider that law more of a guideline than a firm rule. Add to this the fact that Darkfolk outnumber humans by at least ten to one, and the reality is that humans, for all intents and purposes, live as second-class citizens in Nekropolis.

Zombies, intelligent or not, are considered to be the lowest form of life in the supernatural food chain, and I knew firsthand how the Darkfolk treated those they viewed as lesser beings. Given all this, I wasn't sure bringing a child—and a potentially
human
child at that—into this world was the most responsible thing to do. So I'd been conflicted about using the coin. But now circumstance had forced my hand, and I was human again, but only for a single day. I didn't have any more time to wonder if having a child was a good idea. If we were going to try to get pregnant, we had to get started as soon as possible. I didn't want to disappoint Devona, and besides, even with the fertility charm, Papa Chatha had warned us there was no guarantee we'd conceive. So maybe my worries would turn out to be for nothing in the end. But either way, I decided I needed to get home to my love.

That settled, I stepped back out onto the street.

The Sprawl is the most urban of Nekropolis' five Dominions. Even at its best, it normally looks like something out of a Hieronymus Bosch fever dream, but Ruination Row is in a nightmarish class by itself. The streets look like they're made from the craggy gray hide of some rhinoceros-like creature, and the distorted buildings look like they're constructed from a bizarre mix of insect chitin, bleached bone, and pulsating discolored organs. The traffic roars by at lethal speeds, the vehicles ranging from mundane cars imported from Earth to more outré machines like meat-runners, carapacers, and ectoplasmonics. The sidewalk was crowded with pedestrians, most of them Darkfolk, in search of the foul, debased pleasures that can only found in Ruination Row.

I'd originally come to Nekropolis as a living man, but I'd only been in the city a few days before I'd died and been resurrected as a zombie. That was several years ago, and in that time I'd forgotten how overwhelming the city can be on a sensory level. Standing there, my newly restored living senses were inundated with an ocean of sensation—sights, smells, and sounds—and the sheer amount of data was too much for me to process. All I could do was stand in the middle of the sidewalk, frozen in place, eyes wide, mouth hanging open. I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if I drooled a little. I swayed, dizzy, gray nibbling at the edges of my vision, my mind threatening to shut down to protect itself from the overwhelming sensory onslaught. I fought to hold onto consciousness. Passing out on the streets of Nekropolis is not an effective long-term survival strategy.

A tall thin being—I couldn't tell if it was male or female—wrapped from head to toe in strips of moldy gray cloth came toward me. Perched on his or her shoulders was a large bird with multicolored plumage and a wickedly hooked beak. The mummy paid no attention to me as it walked past, but the pharaoh's eagle riding on its shoulders glared at me with disconcertingly intelligent eyes, let out an annoyed squawk, and snapped at me. That hooked beak came within an inch of slicing into the flesh of my cheek, but the eagle missed. The bird glared at me one last time, but it didn't leave its perch to attack, and eventually it turned around to face forward again as its owner continued walking down the street.

The eagle's near miss shocked me back to full awareness. As a zombie, I don't have to worry about getting hurt. Minor cuts and bruises mean nothing to me, and broken bones are merely annoyances to be tended to later. Even losing a limb or two, or being decapitated, isn't a major concern. All I need to do is gather up my pieces and pay Papa Chatha a visit. He always sews me back together.

But I was alive again, and that meant not only could I be hurt, I could be killed. And though I wasn't 100 percent certain how the magic of Charon's Coin worked, I had to assume that if I died during the next twenty-four hours, I'd stay dead. This meant I needed to do something I hadn't done in years: be careful. If I got cut, I'd bleed. And if a pissed-off monster tore my arm out of its socket, it would be more than an inconvenience. It would likely be the end of me. So the best thing I could do was head home, keep my mouth shut, and avoid making eye contact with anyone along the way.

I put my hands in my pants pockets, lowered my gaze to the sidewalk, and started heading east, in the direction of the apartment I shared with Devona, but I only got a few yards before someone walked up to me and said, “Matthew Richter?”

The voice was a smooth, warm baritone, and I felt a strange pull when I heard it. Even though I wanted to ignore whoever it was and keep going, I stopped and raised my head to look the man in the eye.

He was a demon. His kind can vary widely in physical appearance and ability, but they all have several things in common. Their eyes contain multicolored flecks which rotate slowly around the pupils. All Demonkin, regardless of type, have those flecks, and they remain no matter what form a demon assumes. Another aspect they share is the almost hypnotic quality of their voices. As a zombie, demon voices have no effect on me, but as a human, I felt the power in this one's words. It was like I was compelled to listen to him, whether I wanted to or not. Demon voices can be resisted, but it takes effort, and I'd been out of practice for the last few years.

This demon was humanoid for the most part, bald, with dusky red skin, pointed ears, serpent scales beneath his eyes, a thick black soul patch on his chin, and slightly pointed teeth that were so white they almost gleamed. Despite all this, he was handsome enough, though he probably didn't get too many gigs as a male model. He wore a black turtleneck, black slacks, black shoes, and—naturally enough—black socks. Normally, I would have made a smart-ass remark about his lack of sartorial imagination. I mean, wearing black in a city full of monsters where the sun never shines? How much more clichéd can you possibly get? But I was still struggling to adjust to my newly restored senses. Everything was too bright, too loud, too
much
, and I felt almost as if I was drunk. I felt sick, too. My throat was dry and sore, there was an uncomfortable gnawing sensation in the pit of my stomach, and I kept hearing a strange thrumming in my ears. After a moment, I realized that I was thirsty and hungry, and the thrumming I heard was nothing more than the beating of my now living heart.

The demon spoke again, and this time he sounded annoyed. “Mr. Richter?”

I did my best to ignore the powerful sensations I was experiencing. “That's me,” I said. My voice sounded strange. The tone lighter, the words more clearly enunciated.

The demon smiled, displaying his sharp white teeth. “I hear you've been looking for me.”

I was having trouble concentrating, and at first the demon's words didn't sink in. But then it hit me.

“You're the Silversmith.”

“My real name is Gilmore, and as long as we're in public, I'd prefer you use it. And before you get any ideas . . ” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a silver metal rod about six inches in length. On the end of it was a clawed hand, and Gilmore raised the rod and pointed the claw at me. “It might not look like much, but believe me when I say it packs a hell of a wallop.”

It might've looked like nothing more than a backscratcher, but I had no doubt that the weapon Gilmore wielded was the Argentum Perditor. But I pretended not to recognize it. I'd made no mention that I was searching for the artifact during my inquiries around Ruination Row, so Gilmore had no reason to think I knew what his little toy could do. And I'd learned long ago that the more cards you keep concealed from an opponent, the better.