Infernal Affairs (26 page)

“Yes.”

“Good.”

Rashid approached me. “What are we doing? Are we supposed to blunder around this building in the dark, looking for two monsters?”

“Really, only one monster. But yes. That’s the plan.”

“I don’t even have a weapon.”

“You shouldn’t need one.”

“You think I’ve never heard that before?”

“Be quiet,” Latyrix said. “And follow me.” Then she walked through the open door and into the hallway. Nobody questioned her authority as leader of the hunt.

“Where are we going?” Rashid whispered.

“We need to cover each floor,” I replied softly. “Ru is probably tracking us, and Basuram is tracking him.”

“Basuram. Is that the creature from the morgue?”

“Yes.”

“It looked like a centaur.”

“It’s a centaur with a whip, and it’s angry.”

“Where’s security on this floor?” I asked Selena.

“They’ve been diverted elsewhere. We had a minimal presence on this floor already, due to Latyrix being here.”

“Animal litigators can get stressed out by the presence of a lot of armed guards,” I whispered to Rashid. “It puts them in a very defensive mood, and that’s not good for depositions. So this floor was cleared of security prior to your lawyer’s arrival.”

“So we’re alone?”

“Not entirely. There’s an elaborate video system that runs throughout the building, and it’s being monitored twenty-four/seven by a very dedicated technician. She can track our movements, and I think she’s going to—”

I heard the chime of the elevator at the end of the hallway.

I looked at Selena. She drew her athame, holding it crosswise with her Sig Sauer in the way that a police officer would hold his gun and flashlight.

Latyrix stood in front of us, head lowered slightly. The leopard’s mouth was partially open, and I could see her beautiful nest of teeth.

The elevator doors opened.

It was Ru. He saw us and immediately started screaming.

“Away from the wall! Get away! He’s between the—”

I felt Basuram’s presence glance off me, like a sting to my shoulder. I grabbed Rashid and dragged him to the floor. He made an unintelligent sound as he fell, and I saw Latyrix weave to the left.

Basuram exploded through the wall. The demon emerged in a torrent of plaster and drywall, and it was as if a small hurricane had touched down in the hallway, right in front of us. There was a cloud of pulverized material, heavy with metal fragments. Basuram shook itself once, then looked at me.

“You were the last face I remember seeing before I lost consciousness,” it said. “So I’m going to kill you first.”

Latyrix growled. Basuram looked at her in surprise.

“What are you doing on their side? Has your famous court become so biased that you now associate exclusively with humans?”

“Who I socialize with is not your concern. The humans are under my care.”

“That makes you my enemy.”

“Yes. It does.”

Latyrix leapt onto Basuram’s back.

He started to yell something, but then she tore into his throat. Blood-spray blossomed as she hit the left carotid artery. Basuram screamed, trying to throw the leopard off. She only bit deeper. Finally, he smashed her into the facing wall. She untangled herself and leapt away, still growling. Basuram slammed into the leopard and both of them went through the glass of the interrogation room. I ducked, covering my face against the flying debris.

I looked behind me to make sure Rashid was okay. He was dusting glass from his shoulders, quite efficiently, in fact. He looked thoroughly shell-shocked.

Latyrix was crawling through the shattered window of the room, her long body displacing the blinds. She growled and then leapt onto Basuram’s back again. Before the demon could shake her off, she bit deep into the base of its neck. She ravaged the flesh, using her claws to drive the wound open farther. I thought she was going to keep digging until she latched onto the spine with her jaws.

Basuram howled. It tried to shake Latyrix once more, but she was single-minded and kept gnawing. Black blood was flowing, into her eyes and across her snout. The sound was disgusting.

Her beautiful coat’s going to get all matted,
I thought for a moment, stupidly.

Where was Ru? I looked around but couldn’t see him anywhere. Then again, he might have been on the ceiling.

I wanted to call Derrick.

It was a ridiculous feeling, but I couldn’t deny it. You need certain people present during FUBAR situations, and he was one of those people. I wanted him here even more than Lucian, because at least Derrick wasn’t going to fuck me over at the end of the day. I loved Lucian, but I trusted Derrick.

Selena finally came running down the hall. She was yelling something into a headset, and all I caught was the word “incursion.” Then she drew her athame and pointed it at Basuram. A cone of blue-white fire burst from the tip of the blade. The fire touched Basuram’s body, and the demon put a hand to its face, snarling.

“What do you think you are?” Basuram screamed at Latyrix. “A higher being? One of the Bestia? You might as well be a corpse fly. You’re just a clever bitch who’s managed to outlive most of her kind.”

Latyrix shrugged her sleek white shoulders as she rose. “I’ve been called worse by my ex-husband.”

“The poor, cuckolded creature. I’ll bet—”

“I’m giving you the chance to leave,” she interrupted.

“As if anyone wants me to do that right now.” Basuram smiled. “The thing you call Ru is pissing itself. You’ve got a wild animal and an old mage from a trashy family. This is getting operatic.”

“Why are you even here?” Latyrix demanded. “Are you really so intent on delivering a child prisoner to your masters? I don’t see the recompense.”

“The child, as you call the Ptah’li, is a terrorist.”

“He’s done nothing, as far as I can tell from his file. You executed his family in front of him. He’s merely trying to escape you.”

“How impartial of you to say so. Is this how you perform in court?”

“No. I’m not ruled by emotion.” Latyrix stared down Basuram. “I simply know you and demons like you. I know what your intensions usually are, and I know what you’re willing to do to ensure the survival of your middle-class bloodline.”

Basuram chuckled. “Is that supposed to hurt coming from a chained animal?”

“I wear a collar. That doesn’t make me chained.”

“It may as well be a slave collar. Do you think these humans care about anything but your performance as a commodity? They’ll turn you into glue and bonemeal as soon as you outlive your function.”

Latyrix advanced on him. “Then at least I’ll see my death coming. I’ll hear it in the cries of the slaughterhouse.”

“You’ll hear it sooner than that—”

“Get back!”

It was Ru’s voice. I turned to see him standing a few feet away. He was holding a familiar weapon. It was, in fact, the psychic sidearm that Derrick had used when we infiltrated the lair of the Iblis, two years ago. It had a sensor that interfaced telepathically with the user, making every shot perfect.

“I found this in a locked cabinet,” Ru said. “The technology is primitive, but I’m not sure if even a Kentauros skull-plate can withstand twelve direct shots.”

Basuram laughed. “You really think that’s going to do something?”

Ru leveled the gun at Basuram’s head. “I’m optimistic.”

Basuram stepped forward. “You’re pathetic. The Ferid are on their way. They’ll do the same thing to you that they did to your—”

I felt a sudden coldness. The lights flickered.

Selena stared at something behind me. “What’s—”

A dark cloud passed through the room. Something sparkled within its depths, and it moved almost voluptuously, trailing peals of black smoke. It swirled around Basuram’s head, and the demon screamed. Blood poured from its eyes, nose, and mouth. It made a strangled noise and then collapsed.

The cloud was still for only a moment. Somewhere within, I thought I could see two gleaming points, like eyes. They were fixed not on Basuram’s still form, but on me. I stared into the bright points. My own eyes widened.

“Arcadia?” I whispered.

The cloud trembled for a moment. Then it flew past us, vanishing through one of the air ducts in the ceiling.

“What the hell just happened?” Rashid asked.

Blood continued to pump slowly from Basuram’s open mouth, as well as through what I presumed were its tear ducts. The demon appeared to be weeping in death, and as I watched, a black pool spread slowly around its head.

Ru set the gun gently down on the floor. “I suppose that’s done,” he said.

“It’s you.” Rashid stared at him.

Ru met his gaze. “Doctor. I’m sorry if I scared you.”

He actually laughed. “You did.”

“My body was hibernating. I came out of it just as you were—”

Rashid winced. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“I was not hurt,” Ru said.

“I don’t understand how this is all possible.” Rashid stared at us. “How all of you are even remotely possible.”

“Not understanding is the least of your problems right now,” I told him. “Let’s just concentrate on getting you out of immediate danger.”

“Can you really protect me?” he asked.

“We’ll do our best. But a lot of wild and crazy things would like to see you dead, so don’t expect miracles.”

“We should get that printed on a business card,” Selena observed.

I shrugged. “At least it would be honest.”

That was strange.

I rubbed my eyes. Light was filtering through a small window, getting in through the cracks that were visible in the cheap yellow roll-down blind. The pillow beneath my head was soft, but also seemed a tad small, like the bed itself. I groaned. I’d been having the strangest dream about berries and small demons that could spit green froth clear across the room. My stomach rumbled. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten. I felt emptied out and exhausted.

I started to sit up slowly. Then, as my surroundings actually registered, shape by familiar shape, I stopped. I wasn’t in my room at home, although I was in a room that I’d seen many times before.

It was my childhood bedroom.

Everything was as I remembered it. The floor was old hardwood, rotting slightly at the edges. The window, I knew, would be a bitch to open, since layers of dried paint had long ago rendered it nearly immobile. There was a time when, after sliding it open inch by inch, I would have been able to crawl through and sit on the ledge with my feet hanging just above the ground. This provided convenient access to the backyard, where I staged most of my early duels with malcontents who’d invaded our garden.

I looked up. Sure enough, on top of my old redpainted bookshelf, there was a fish bowl. My unnamed goldfish swam inside, ignoring the colored stones that had settled at the base of the glass bowl. I’d never really warmed up to fish as a kid, partly because they smelled funny, but mostly owing to the fact that we always had cats. After holding more than one impromptu funeral service in the bathroom with my stepfather, I’d grown inured to the charms of anything without whiskers.

I pushed aside the Minnie Mouse quilt, which barely covered me anyway, and stood up. The sheets had that annihilated consistency of fabric that’s been washed too many times, slightly pilled now, but soft as a dream. My pillow, rather than smelling of hair spray or shampoo, had no scent at all.

I had to move carefully, since the room was packed with things. My bookshelf leaned sideways beneath the weight of its
World Book
collection, filled with colored illustrations of insects, machines, and distant star clusters. A copy of
The Phantom Tollbooth
lay dog-eared on the top shelf. I remembered reading it when I’d been confined to bed after getting the mumps. I’d itched and hurt and wanted to scream and scratch every inch of my body, until I was nothing but a shaking bloody mess, but for a few hours that book kept me distracted.

Toys were piled in the corners of the room without any sense of organization. Snake Mountain stood against the wall, its hinged mechanism allowing it to open like a volume made of hard purple plastic. I had broken the microphone years ago, or maybe it had never worked to begin with, but you could still place action figures within the bowels of the castle. You just had to be the voice of Skeletor yourself, or God, or whatever thing you wanted to be in that moment.

The figures themselves languished in a plastic bucket. He-Man was endlessly replicated in varieties to suit any medieval occasion: battle action, riding action, chest-plate action with realistic damage, and one that was simply denuded and lying at the very bottom, facedown. I couldn’t remember the precise scenarios I’d dreamt up for them all, but they usually involved deteriorating negotiations followed by disorganized combat. My mother never tried to buy me Barbie. She was wiser than that.

A few times, I think, Kevin suggested that I might want to play with more feminine toys, but I just stared at him, uncomprehending. He bought me a Rainbow Bright doll one Christmas, a Moondreamers doll the next, but they were immediately consigned to my closet. My Little Pony was okay in a pinch for cavalry scenes, but on the whole, I preferred actual knights.

There were a lot of questions I could have asked myself at this point.

Where was Ru?

Was this a dream? And, if so, how could it be so perfect?

Was I dead or dying or in some kind of perimortem state?

Maybe this really was the afterlife. I was barely eight years old when I’d lived in the bungalow on Young Street, in the town of Elder, with my mother and stepfather. From what I could remember, I’d been happy here. I guess settling here for eternity made about as much sense as settling anywhere else. At least there was a convenience store close by, the Honey Market, with an inexhaustible supply of Archie comics and Popsicles.