The Stringer (8 page)

11.

THERE WAS ENDLESS, INFINITE
gas in the air, but I slashed my forearm and felt through the chaos for the tiny pulsing thread that was me, that was
my
life seeping out into the hungry universe, shit flecked with gold. I seized on it, running through my bag of dirty tricks.

Me and Mags had spent a lot of time sleeping outdoors, and I'd cobbled together a few decent offensive
mu
,
War Cantrips. Nothing powerful, because when you were riding your own melt and no one else's, you couldn't do much without bleeding out and killing yourself; but it was all I had.

I would have to do something similar to the trick I'd played on Lugal: Take a dozen shit spells and glue them together into something better. But I would get only one shot; anything more than bullshit and I'd be half dead after one casting.

“Mags!” I shouted as we ran. “If I go down, you pick me up and carry me.”

The mages and their Bleeders ignored us. I caught a glimpse of the woman in black, or her Glamour, floating serenely overhead. She looked right at me, and my balls attempted to crawl up into my body. Mags body-checked people, knocking them left and right with casual twitches of his shoulder, an unstoppable force, and I drafted behind him, trying to keep up as I ran through my repertoire.

A bloated Bleeder, holding his hood in one hand, swerved to avoid Mags, then sailed up into the air, exploding into a red mist a few feet up. With a roar, another wave of flames erupted from thin air, rolling over the field, screams and howls.

Mags put his head down and ran us through it. I felt the heat, intolerable, agonizing, and then the house loomed up in front of us.

Between us and the house were the
arad
.

Fat and skinny, tall and short, they oriented on us the moment we burst through, a dozen men and women who looked worse for the wear. They were sweaty, muddy, hollow-eyed; most had lost their shoes, and their feet were bloody stumps. The demons that animated them didn't care about their health or the state of the corpses they were animating; they cared only about following their mistress's instructions.

They charged, and I spat seven Words, taking some inspiration from what my old pal Lugal was doing to the
enustari
and their Bleeders all around us: levitation. The Stringers were people dominated by demons, which was a word for intelligences from another plane or some such shit. Weak link: They were just bodies. As Mags put his shoulder down to clear a path, all the
arad
shot about ten feet into the air and hung there. I felt the drain as the universe took my sacrifice; I stumbled and caught hold of Mags's jacket to stop myself from falling over as the wave of nauseated weakness passed through me. We ran under the Stringers as they waved their arms and legs at us, too far above to do any damage.

And then Mags kicked in the front door, and we were in the house. The noise level dropped, then rose up along with the ambient light as something brighter than the sun bloomed behind us, either another assault from Lugal rummaging through Elsa's library of spells or a counterattack organized by Fallon.

“Hall, straight on!” I shouted, breathing hard. I felt dizzy and hot and rubber-legged, but as Mags steered himself into the narrow, suffocating hallway, I rallied. This wasn't the worst I'd ever felt. I'd done way more, I'd cast when I was about to pass out, I'd woken up in the emergency room with some sucker's gas hooked up to me, moments from death. This was nothing.

Bodies appeared at the other end of the hall, feral, writhing, their clothes torn and their fingernails ripped away as the
arad
ground their prisoners down. They threw themselves at us, snarling as their human mouths attempted to speak a language they were physically incapable of pronouncing. Mags caught the first, growling, and somehow levered them up and over, tossing them behind us as if they weighed nothing, then went crashing into the rest, roaring. I was ready, Words in my head, but I held back. I had to make my blood count.

One of the Stringers reached around Mags as he struggled and caught me by the arm, her hand hot and her strength surprising, sinewy and taut, like she was controlled by wires. I jerked back, spitting out a single Word—
sutaka—
and she doubled over as if hit by something heavy, sailing backward and pulling me with her, her grip like a vise.

A wave of exhaustion swept through me as my spell took its toll, and for a few seconds I wasn't able to summon the strength to resist. The Stringer reeled me in by the arm, hand over hand. Just before she leaned forward to sink her teeth into my face, Mags grabbed hold of my foot and yanked with superhuman force, pulling me free. I twisted around in time to see Mags spin and leap into the crowd of Stringers, knocking them down in a confused pile of howls and snarls.

I gathered myself. As I watched, Mags played Whack-a-Mole, knocking each
arad
down until they were all unconscious.

Mags in a fury was something to see.

When he turned, though, his face was a mask of concern. I struggled to my feet and waved him off.

“I'm fine,” I croaked, pushing a bloody hand through my hair. “Come on.”

I led him through the door to her little office or study or whatever it was. I signaled to Mags that he should stay outside.

“
Lem
,” he whispered urgently, “she's
enustari
. She's got
power
.”

I shook my head and took hold of the doorknob. She was
enustari
and she had power. But I was
idimustari
and I had tricks.

I rushed in, seizing my own thin thread of gas and speaking a new spell, a spell I'd cobbled together from the one she'd cast to insert Lugal in me. I had always been good with the Words. It was the source of Hiram's anger at me: He thought I was one of the most talented
ustari
he'd ever known, yet I refused to bleed anyone.

I'd changed her spell. Shortened it. Shifted the link between puppet and master. I recited it quickly, eyes closed, and felt the glorious sewer feel of the gas, felt the eager universe reaching into me like some giant insect and sucking my life force from me, felt myself being pulled through a tiny infinite tunnel into someone else's mind.

I OPENED MY
eyes. I was kneeling on the floor, shivering, freezing cold. I felt hollow and exhausted, the sort of bright-eyed tired you got to after forcing yourself to stay awake for a few days. I knew if I looked in a mirror, I would be white as a sheet, gray-lipped, red-eyed. Nearly dead. Conscious by force of will alone.

She sat at the desk, staring blankly, her hands frozen in her knitting. Lurida Moret,
enustari
. She was a vision of Grandmother in repose.

I closed my eyes and could see through
hers
. Her vision was pretty blurry. I lifted my arm, and she lifted hers. I could sense her somewhere, as if she were locked in a small box and buried some distance away. I could sense her rage and her fear and her determination to make me suffer, but I had taken control. She'd inserted a demon called Lugal into my mind. I'd inserted myself into
hers
. I was stringing Lurida, and I had full control—for how long, I wasn't sure.

I could feel her spells, see them clearly, and began cutting them loose, one by one, as if I'd cast them myself. Ending a spell that hadn't been made permanent didn't take any gas. You just severed the connection. I didn't have to bleed any of her poor mopes to undo her chaos. I couldn't see outside, but as I worked, I knew what was happening: Corpses were falling over, unanimated, as
arad
were pulled from them and sent back to their native plane. People were screaming, looking around in terror as after a nightmare. Elsa fell to the ground, irritated, perhaps afraid—though she didn't seem the type.

Footsteps outside the door, urgent, loud.

I opened my eyes again as Fallon entered, trailed by a fat Bleeder in a decent green suit, out of breath, three deep cuts on his head leaking into his eyes. As my vision shifted from Lurida's back to my own, Fallon looked around, then was kneeling next to me.

“Mr. Mageshkumar!” he shouted. “Come help with your friend.”

THE CHAOS OUTSIDE
was more or less as I'd expected. The grass was littered with bodies: Bleeders and the former Stringers. Most of the Archmages had fled, but three—including, I was surprised to see, Elsa—had remained, along with Hiram, meekly following Fallon's orders. A few confused, horrified people staggered about calling out for help, people who'd just spent days or weeks trapped under the power of an alien intelligence, forced to do horrible things. If I'd had any more energy, I might have felt badly for them.

I was wrapped in three coarse gray blankets, sipping some of Lurida's warm tea, shaking more or less uncontrollably. Mags fished out his blade and cut a modest wound in his arm, and before I could stop him, he'd recited a crude, simple spell and I felt a little better—my shaking died down to a tremble, and keeping my eyes open didn't feel like torture.

“You have done well, Mr. Vonnegan,” Fallon said, suddenly behind us. The old man moved light. “You can release your hold on Lurida now. We have secured her.”

I nodded and, with a sigh, let the connection dissolve. I was glad to say goodbye to that sense of hatred aimed at me. I realized Fallon was standing over me, and I summoned my waning energy and looked up at him. He had his hands in his pockets and looked like he'd just stepped out of a fantastic restaurant, an elegant, rich old man used to getting his way. He gazed down at me, his lined face sober.

“You have great potential, Mr. Vonnegan,” he said, producing a business card and handing it to me. I took it in numb fingers; it was blank.

“You are wasted as
urtuku
to Mr. Bosch. Even were he to resume teaching you, you have already surpassed him in most ways. But as I said, you must choose, Mr. Vonnegan. To either remain
idimustari
, a Trickster, and live like”—he waved his hand at us—“
this
. Or to fulfill your destiny as a mage. Believe me, it doesn't have to be Bosch's way or Elsa's. It can be better, and I would show you.” He sighed. “Bosch will cause no problems. Make your choice, Mr. Vonnegan, and when you do, dispel the Glamour on that card—if you can—and come see me.”

We stared at each other for a moment, and then he nodded, turned, and walked away. As he receded into the darkness, I could see him pulling something from his pocket, and then he was gone.

“Lem?” Mags asked in his Tiny Voice. “You okay, Lem?”

I patted his knee. In that moment I wanted nothing more than to buy Mags a bag of candy, just to see the delight on his face.

“Yup.” I sighed and stirred myself. “Come on,” I said, pushing Fallon's card into my pocket. “Let's see if there's anything in the house we can steal.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

WHEN MY EDITOR, ADAM
Wilson, first suggested I write some novellas set in the
Ustari
universe, I demanded a huge sum of money and sent him a contract rider that was forty-seven pages long, and he wished me luck in finding another publisher. When I called him at three a.m. crying and begging him to take me back, he did so, and for that I am grateful.

When I called my agent, Janet Reid, and told her of my plans to write a sixteen-volume paranormal romance about a race of superintelligent cats, she had me put on a forty-eight-hour psychiatric hold and suggested I work on this instead, and for that, I thank her.

While writing these stories, whenever I had doubts or fears, I would tell my beautiful wife, Danette, about them and she would suggest we adopt another cat. This is how she shows love.

To all the people who read
We Are Not Good People
and who reacted with enthusiasm and excitement when these novellas were announced, you have my sincere appreciation and gratitude. I hope these stories live up to your expectations. And that all your checks clear.

Keep reading for a sneak peek of the adventures of Lem and Mags in

WE ARE NOT GOOD PEOPLE

Where the main action of the Ustari Cycle happens!

(Note: Part One of
We Are Not Good People
was previously published separately as
Trickster
)

“T
HERE'S A GIRL IN
the tub,” Mags said.

I looked up at him. His hair was getting long. It was glossy and silky, a grand black forest of hair. His eyebrows almost met in the middle, giving him a permanently sinister expression. I could not actually pronounce his actual last name, and called him Pitr Mags because it was better than calling him Pitr the Indian Bastard.

“A fifty-year-old dead girl?” I asked, thinking bones and webs, a fine bed of off-white dust lining the tub beneath it.

He shook his head, pushing his bandaged fingers into his pockets. “Recent.”

I paused in the act of tearing up the carpet. We were broke again. Sometimes it seemed like we'd done all of this before, an endless cycle of failure. The last seventeen dollars we'd possessed had been spent on Neilsson, passed over with a pinprick of gas to make it look like three hundred and forty in twenties, and all Mags and I had to our names was what was pumping in our veins.

We were fucking incompetent. In all things, we'd failed. We were wallowing in a nice, comfy pit of fucking spectacular failure, deep black and hermetically sealed, me and Mags bound together forever and ever with deep fishhooked ties of ruin.

I hauled myself to my feet. Fished in my jacket pocket, produced a fresh bandage, and began working the thin wrapper free, difficult due to the damp and soiled bandages that adorned all nine of my other fingers and the fresh slice oozing blood on my index finger. Faint sparks of pain flared from my fingertips as I worked at it.

I was careful to not let any blood drip anywhere, get smeared anywhere. Leave no mark, that was rule one. No trace of yourself. Blood was only usable for a few seconds, ten, twenty. After that, you couldn't burn it away no matter how big the spell. Best not to take chances.

The apartment was supposed to have been a good score. We'd heard that Neilsson had a card up his sleeve, and the old drunk had a sheen of success about him. Despite floating around our social level, which should have been our first clue. But Neilsson had been a pilot, back a few decades, and he worked art, and thus had an aura of intellect and culture that was powerfully attractive to men like Mags and me, small minds drenched in blood and peasant fare. The codger spoke with an adorable accent and I never had gotten past the childish idea that all people with some sort of accented English must be fucking geniuses. When sober, Neilsson was a good operator and he'd made some decent kosh from time to time, so we took the rumor seriously. And decided to work him, the way only Mags and I could: a little bit of Charm, a little bit of booze, a little bit of gas.

It took all fucking night to get it out of the old bastard. We could have bled more and settled some real voodoo on his shoulders and pushed, but Mags and me, we didn't bleed anyone else, we relied solely on ourselves, so that would have left us too exhausted to do anything useful. So we used our usual tricks. Aside from the faked twenties—the manager would count out the drawer later and discover a stack of one-dollar bills—we used a couple of charmer Cantrips to make Neilsson like us, and then poured whiskey down his throat until, grinning with his pink lips buried under a forest of yellow-white beard, he'd crooked a finger at us and told us about a wonderful score he'd heard of: the Time Capsule.

I looked around the room, holding the candle we'd found in the kitchen—misshapen, fleshlike in texture, already claiming a starring role in my nightmares for years to come—out in front of me. The room was cluttered, the furniture all curves and satin, uncomfortable to look at. I could believe that no one had opened the door or a window in fifty years. It smelled like death, and I tried to take shallow breaths. I shot my cuffs, wriggling my toes inside my wing tips. They'd seen better days. There was a thin spot on the sole beneath the ball of my foot that was a week or so away from a hole. It was October, and if we didn't manage something substantial in short order, I was looking at a winter spent with wet feet, snow crowding in from the street and making me numb.

“Let's take a look,” I said.

I had no idea how to monetize a dead girl in a tub, but somehow it seemed like there had to be a way to do so. Why else would the universe construct such a complex contraption if it didn't roar into life, belch black smoke into the air, and start producing something?

The place had been locked up forty-five years before, the story went. Neilsson telling us with a slurred, ruby-red tongue and a yellowed, blurred eye. The owner was a rich bastard whose parents had died, leaving this apartment on East Seventieth Street. He'd had it shuttered and gone to California. And never came back, the apartment sitting here like an unopened oyster, growing some unholy pearl in its center, a time capsule of old money. Now that we were here, breathing in decades-old dust and farting into the moldy cushions, it was ridiculous. What had we expected to find? Fucking piles of jewels? Pots of gold? A helpful guidebook pointing out the valuables?

Well, I reminded myself, maybe there was a safe. We could handle a safe. I could bleed a bit more before I got woozy. And if I got woozy there would always be the Rats, if I could get Pitr to go along with it.

I followed Mags. He walked like he was angry at the floor. After a short hallway wallpapered in hideous stripes, a few framed oil paintings that might have been something special hanging every three feet, we were in the master bedroom. It was a large room, no window but a small bath en suite—which was unusual for an older apartment. A huge brown water stain had bloomed on the ceiling, the plaster dropped away and lying on the bedspread in a moldy pile. The room smelled terrible, and I figured if I pressed a hand against the ceiling it would be damp, a tiny, persistent leak, probably only when the tenants upstairs flushed their toilet. A trickle of water that had been invisible for years forming into just a damp spot at first and then just a big damp circle and then just a big damp circle turning black from mold and then one day five years ago the ceiling had crumbled onto the bed in a silent catastrophe.

I stood on the thick carpet that felt crusty and stiff under me, my throbbing fingers in my pockets, and hesitated. It was strange. No one had been in the apartment for decades, and you could feel it, the emptiness, the shock of movement forcing jellied air back into motion. The place looked like a museum, smelled like the back alley of a butcher shop, and my skin crawled.

There was nothing. Of course there was nothing. I was shaking a little, my fingers throbbing and my newest wound bleeding slowly, the bandage damp and clinging on by sheer determination. This had been our last, best idea.

There had to be something. There had to be
something
.

There was: a dead girl in the tub.

The bathroom was small, covered over with a black-and-white tile design made up of tiny little squares, dozens of which had popped from the walls. There was more water damage in here, a humid feel, the ceiling sagging downward as if filled with brackish, rusty liquid. The smell was bad, trapped in the tiny confines. There was an ornate pedestal sink with brass fixtures and a small, basic-looking toilet with a pull-chain flush, the water tank on the wall above it. The mirror had darkened, black spots clouding the silver, one on top of the other until it was a dark, phantom mirror, something that grudgingly reflected you but only after running you through smoke and clouds.

The tub was a big old claw-foot, the porcelain yellow, the brass fixtures matching the sink. There was no showerhead.

The girl was young and naked, lying on her side with her knees drawn up to her belly, her skin milky, blue veins visible. She had short dark hair and looked almost peaceful curled up on the bone-dry bottom of the tub. I looked around; the place appeared deserted, but someone had been here within the last few days to drop off a body. I stood there, listening, as it suddenly seemed entirely probable that someone had crept into the place behind us.

Mags knelt down and peered at her, cocking his head. “She's been bled, Lem.”

I blinked and looked at him. The words were just sounds, and then meaning snapped into them and I stepped over to stand next to him, looking down at the girl. He was right. She had the translucent look to her, drained cleanly, every drop of blood sucked out. I knelt down next to him and reached in to push some of her short dark hair aside, squinting down at the wound on her neck. It was clean and minimal, familiar.

Mags had the clean-slate cheer of the dim-witted. He crouched there serenely, certain that I would solve this little problem for us. That I would roll her over and discover some ancient cash, or jewels, or discover that she wasn't dead at all. Mags's faith in me was sometimes invigorating, more often exhausting. Mags could survive on rage and profanity; he didn't need to eat. I thought of him as a pet sometimes, a monstrous kitten I'd picked up and let sleep in my pocket one night, and now—when I looked at his plump, blood-engorged face and twitchy, murderous hands, I felt a stab of horrifying affection—Mags was my responsibility.

I was thirty-three years old and I was wearing the sum total of my worldly possessions, and recently, decisions I'd made when I was fifteen didn't seem so fucking bright anymore. We all thought we were special—all of us, every fucking Trickster all the way up to the fucking
enustari
, we all thought we had the edge. And maybe we did. But here I was, dopey from blood loss and begging the universe for a handout.

I stood up and fished my switchblade from my pocket, pressing the button and hearing the familiar, horrible
snick
of the blade flashing out.

“What—” Mags said, barking the word like he meant it as declarative:
What!

I unfolded my left hand and drew the blade across my palm, just deeply enough to draw a thick, slow ooze of blood. The pain, as always, shivered through me like poison, and I sucked in a breath, tensing. I'd cut myself millions of times. I had faint white scars on both hands, my arms, my legs, and even my stomach. I did it immediately and without thought, letting my underbrain run the show.

Blood dripped from my clenched fist as a hot icy rash of fire spread over my palm. Closing my eyes I imagined the glow, saw the faint blue light in my mind, and on the beat of my heart I whispered the spell. The blood sizzled away midair, consumed, and my wound was dry and open, aching.

A wave of dizzy weariness swept through me. As a damp line of blood oozed into place on my palm, my hand was engulfed in a soft blue glow that made Mags look like he was made of shadows. Puke mounting in my throat, I knelt down and resisted the urge to put my forehead against the cool porcelain tub. I stretched out my arm to hold the eerie light over her. Instantly, a complex pattern of symbols, like invisible tattoos, faded into visibility on her skin, covering all of her. I knew without checking that they were under her hair, too, inside her earlobes, on the webby skin between her fingers.

“Fuck,” Mags breathed, the word now a plaintive exclamation. “She's marked.”

I stared down at the runes for another second. They were complex, and I didn't have time to pick through them and compare them to my memories, to what my
gasam
had taught me. I knew a few things right away: I knew the runes would Ward her from any other magic I might try to cast, resisting all but the most bloody and powerful spells, and I knew this meant she was part of something way out of my league.

I studied her face. Sixteen? Twenty? It was hard to tell. Curled up in the tub, she looked peaceful. Young. There were old bruises on her arms. A crust of snotty blood around one nostril. I looked at her feet. Was relieved she was barefoot. For a second I remembered canvas tennis shoes, pink marker. The sound of a girl shivering, her bare arms bruised just like that.

I pushed the memory away, angry at myself. I hadn't bled this girl. I hadn't done anything.

I looked at Mags. His big, flat face was crunched up in thought, and I knew I had to get him out of here before whoever had done this came back. I snapped my hand out like I was throwing something and the blue light sizzled away, leaving us in the faint light of the candle. I reached down and dragged him up by his collar.

I'd thought about turning around. A moment of crazy affection for Mags outside the door and I'd thought maybe sleeping out in the open one more night wouldn't be the worst thing ever. Now I knew what the Worst Thing Ever looked like. Or at least the tip of that black iceberg.

“Come on,” I said, pushing him toward the door. Mags could fold me into complex patterns and not break a sweat, but he was tame.

“What's up, Lem?”

I kept pushing him, urging him to go faster, imagining the owner of that corpse walking in the door and finding us—and whoever had marked her was a fucking deep well of trouble for any Trickster or normal person caught here.

We are not good people.

We rushed through the hall and back into the first room, as sealed and stultifying as ever, the candle guttering in front of us and throwing odd shadows everywhere. My heart was pounding as I urged the big cocksucker forward, almost throwing him through the door. I didn't bother putting things back the way they'd come; the important thing was to not be here anymore.

In the hall, I spun and pulled the door shut behind us, my fingers still throbbing. I squeezed my sliced hand again and opened my palm to reveal a nice smear of greasy blood; I wrapped my hand around the doorknob, took a deep breath, and whispered a Cantrip to replace the Wards we'd broken and not noticed in our haste to get inside, the syllables—not Words, really, just sounds—welling up automatically from memory. It was all about patterns, rhythms. You could find ways to cut the Words down, just like any language. You could say
Please pass me the salt
or you could say
Pass the salt
and they meant the same thing. It was the same with magic. You could cast a spell with fifty Words, you could cast the same spell with five Words, if you knew what you were doing.