Nylon Angel (29 page)

‘Come in, Parrish. We’ve been waiting for you.’

I should have been surprised. But to tell the truth, I was beginning to think there were no more surprises left for me.

‘Vayu?’

She nodded briefly in acknowledgement.

I stepped inside.

Candles littered the perimeter of the room, and holo statues for warding off bad spirits. Cross-legged on the floor sat a group of people - a mixture of races and ages, but similar in other ways. A wave of energy coursed around them as if I’d somehow stumbled into the swirl of an electrical storm. My body hair stood on end.

Vayu glided around behind me and took her place in the circle. She beckoned me over to sit by her side.

‘Put your gun away,’ she instructed in a quiet voice. ‘We won’t harm you.’

I believed her - most shamans are pacifists - but shook my head anyway. ‘Sorry.’

She sighed heavily and nodded.

I sat next to her, leaving the Remington loose in my lap. It seemed a crude gesture on my part. But heck!

They sat in an intense, heavy silence, waiting for me to speak, but the words stuck in my throat.

In the end Vayu took pity on me. ‘Mei is still alive.’

I nearly asked,
How do you know?
, but that would have been stupid and pointless. So I settled for, ‘Good news. I’m glad.’

She smiled then, a beautiful, shining thing that made me feel stained.

‘I don’t know that we can help you, Parrish Plessis. The creature growing inside you is already strong.’

‘Can you explain it to me?’

‘Perhaps. But first you must tell us what you know.

We can sense the earth’s energy flows are changing, transforming in ways we have never seen before.’ She shivered.

I began telling my strange story. ‘I went to Mei Sheong for help. I’d been having visions - of an Angel. We both took a drink. Mushroom, I think. Then I had the vision. I spoke to it. It’s - it’s a parasite feeding from my body. It’s somehow been trapped by my immune system but now it is free.’

‘How so?’

‘I’m not sure. I know a man who has modified genes in locals . . .’

‘I’ve heard talk of him. But Parrish, what do you think this parasite seeks?’

‘It told me we would evolve into something else.’

Vayu paled. The others shifted and whispered among themselves in grave, low voices.

‘We feared something, but not this. What can we do? It’s outside our understanding, our capabilities,’ she said.

It wasn’t what I wanted to hear. ‘You mean it’s not a hallucination? This creature is real?’

‘Yes. True shamans have always been able to contact the spirit plane with the assistance of hallucinogens. What you have encountered on your pathway to meet with the spirits is different. An interloper - a parasite you call it. But others have come to us with similar stories. To those unaffected by the visions it may seem like madness. But we shamans see further than the material world. We see energy.’

Vayu’s revelation floored, terrified and relieved me all at once. I
wasn’t
crazy but I
was
possessed. I don’t know that it made me feel any better. ‘But how did this happen? Where is this creature from?’ I gasped.

‘We don’t know,’ Vayu said.

‘Why is it in me and not you?’

She shook her head helplessly. ‘You must find the answer to that.’

‘What can you do?’

She hung her head in ready defeat. ‘We can only wait and watch.’

My bewilderment quickened to anger. ‘You mean you’ve given up already!’

A ripple passed through the group - embarrassment, perhaps? Enough, hopefully, for me to prick their guilt, not combust their fear.

I homed in on the opportunity. ‘I can tell you this much. It’s some type of information creature, feeding off the epinephrine - the adrenalin - in our bodies. You deal in energy, don’t you? Isn’t information energy?’

‘Energy trapped within flesh? But how can this work?’ Vayu’s eyes widened.

I shrugged.

‘For a human body to confine such energy, the creature must be providing some mechanism to protect the flesh. If we knew what that was, perhaps . . .’

She looked intently around the circle at each shaman. One by one they nodded briefly in unspoken agreement.

She took a breath. ‘Parrish Plessis, the others have agreed to try another journeybak if you are willing? Perhaps with more of us we will be stronger and can learn more. But it will still be dangerous.’

I grimaced. ‘What’s a little danger between total strangers?’

No one seemed to share my humour.

They joined hands and began a low chant accompanied by precise but fluid movements, similar to the ones Mei had made.

I knew what to expect this time and prepared for the rush as I swallowed from the receptacle Vayu passed me.

This time, though, the rush was gentle: a slide into a white haze.

 

Then the shadow grew as if gorging on her light until I could see nothing, feel nothing
. . .

 

Consciousness found me on the floor in Vayu’s room, on my knees, hands outstretched. Around me the shamans lay - lifeless. I crawled frantically from one to the other listening for heartbeats. The only one I heard was my own; wild, frightened and confused.

When the door was flung wide open and bodies crammed through, I was thumping Vayu’s chest and screaming at her to breathe.

Dreadlocks and incisors dripping saliva answered me instead. A slight figure followed them in, wearing its snake smile. Eager for me.

Jamon.

‘Well done.’ He stroked the lead ’goboy on the head. ‘You were right.’ Then he addressed me, a sweeping gesture taking in the bodies of the shamans. ‘Parrish, what have you been up to?’

I stared at him, incapable of speech.

‘My ’goboys have been tracking you for a while,’ he said conversationally, holding up the remnants of the Beach Boys’ T. ‘I hope your friend doesn’t want this back?’

Teece’s shirt! What happened to the Slummer who wore it?

‘Take her home!’ he instructed with a twitch of his tattooed cheek.

I staggered to my feet, swinging the Remington up, firing. The first shot took the closest ’goboy, but it ended there. The magazine was empty.

I swung the barrel as a bat.

But Jamon knew not to risk his men in hand-to-hand combat against me. They shot me with a paralysis derm from a few metres.

I ducked sideways to avoid it. Two more were already on their way. One struck me in the hip. In a matter of seconds I collapsed, unable to move my legs.

‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘The effects remain localised to your legs, Parrish. It will fade. In a few days.’

A few days!
He might as well have shot me in the head.

They came then and bound my hands, touching me all over with the eagerness of grave robbers. They bore me back to Jamon’s rooms like a trophy, through the confusion and craziness crippling Torley’s.

Everyone I saw was armed. Many were bleeding or staggering hungry. I glimpsed familiar faces, and they me. No one spoke or offered help. I didn’t blame them. They were too busy surviving.

Jamon’s villa was unchanged - the polished table and scores of heavily scented candles; hand-cut crystal glasses on the sideboard - except for a large rectangle of clear plastic that stood against one wall. It was shrouded in a velveteen cover with only the edges jutting out. I wondered at its size, as Jamon’s hounds dumped me on his sofa.

He followed my gaze with a strange, almost dreamy, expression. ‘You ran away, Parrish. You shouldn’t have done that,’ he said.

Then he swung and punched me.

A direct uncontested hit that rattled my teeth and sent a hot skewer of pain across one cheekbone.

Hate consumed me. I twisted away, spitting blood from my mouth. But my legs flopped uselessly, like dead meat, and I slid sideways on the sofa.

Through the doorway the babble of his comm network mocked my uselessness. In the middle of a war, tied up and semi-paralysed.

Like Loyl, Jamon directed his fight from a screen. And yet he had left his comm to come and get me? And they say there’s nothing like a woman scorned!

Blood trickled from my mouth, staining the silk covers.

‘I’m not yours to have to run away from, Jamon,’ I whispered hoarsely.

‘Brave words,’ he said, ‘but that’s all they are. You see, now Stellar is gone you’ll be living here with me.’

He was right. They were brave words. In truth he terrified me. But live with him? Not in this hell or any other!

He smiled again. ‘Now make yourself comfortable, Parrish. I have business to attend. If you attempt to escape, they will stake you for my pleasure.’

Stake me. I knew what he meant. The image of it mushroomed in my brain. I stared across at the door. The same four ’goboys that had paraded me through Torley’s were posted outside it.

Jamon disappeared into his comm room, leaving two more guards watching his back. Even paralysed, with half my face shattered, he was taking no chances.

I was flattered. Enough to tear him limb from limb. If only I could feel my legs and feet. And if only my face didn’t hurt like someone had scraped half of it off.

Time spiralled.

I lay helplessly on the couch, in a strange world of numbness, pain and despair.

Eventually I dozed, woken again by Jamon’s restless prowling and a change of guards. They squeezed tubes of water into my mouth, and held me laughingly over a bucket to pee. Once they bothered to turn me so that my view rotated between the plaster wall and the candle-strewn mahogany table.

When I was awake and lucid, I listened to the incoming accounts of the fighting. It helped distract me from the throbbing in my cheek and the depressing reality of my predicament.

Even though the reports were conveyed in a kind of panting ’goboy shorthand, I gleaned enough to know that although Jamon had enlisted Topaz’s support against Daac, the Muenos weren’t cooperating.

A furious Topaz wept repeatedly over the comm to Jamon. ‘My hands are tied, Señor Jamon. The Muenos won’t fight for me. One of my men, Pas, is leading a revolt. My informants say they are waiting for word from someone they are calling Oya.’

Reports also filtered in, that small groups of Jamon’s ’goboys had been set upon by feral children armed with bioweapons. One attack in particular had claimed more than fifty. The feral, a girl about ten years old, had released a quick-acting virus in the barracks while one whole shift of ’goboys slept. The girl was found dead near the entrance.

I wept then - unashamedly. Like never before in my life. Until my soul was dry and hard.

Then came the strangest of all the accounts.

Jamon’s right-hand ’goboy had vanished at the same location as Teece’s business, west of Torley’s. He’d been on a night scout, disappearing near an uncovered manhole. Search attempts underground had only revealed scores of hostile canrats.

Underground? The canrats? Or could it possibly be Gwynn?

An ember of hope ignited in my chest; and resolve. The Muenos, the ferals and now Gwynn. I couldn’t let them down.

Occasionally I heard Daac’s name mentioned. Jamon wanted him bad.

I thought a lot about Teece. As long as he’s alive, I thought, I can cope with the rest.

If he wasn’t I’d never forgive Loyl. Or Jamon.

Or myself.

 

Sometime after the report on his man’s disappearance, Jamon emerged, grimly, from his comm room.

He sent the two internal guards away, leaving only the four outside. Then he came and sat next to me, holding a set of wired-up restraints. Lifting the waist of my shirt he rubbed them across my bare skin. The charge prickled mildly.

He lowered his mouth and ran his lips along the same line then he mounted me, awkwardly, tearing the rest of my shirt away. His face contorted with frustration and anger.

With the tips of the restraints he administered a series of electric shots across my breasts. I spasmed in pain but clamped my teeth tightly together, willing myself not to give him the pleasure of my screams.

Every now and then he stopped to survey the marks on my skin and smile in satisfaction at the tears streaking down my face.

‘Why have you started this, Jamon? Why are you killing all these people?’

He frowned, his eyes dark with madness. ‘Loyl Daac wants my territory, Parrish.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Lang.’

Lang!
I squeezed my eyes shut, feeling the grainy-grey beginnings of a vision. The parasite was swarming my consciousness. I let it come. With it came an excruciating burning, heralding the sudden return of sensation to my legs.