Back From the Undead (3 page)

That stops me for a second. Just when you think the scum can’t get any worse, you find another layer of filth below the last one.
If
he’s being honest, and not just looking for a way to push my buttons. “Is he telling the truth?”

“Not necessarily. Pire children are highly valued, of course—one child is all that most pire couples ever have—but the NSA hasn’t seen any rise in reported child disappearances.”

“So he’s lying.”

“Perhaps not. Which brings us to the worse news: Stoker says he’s in Vancouver. Canada, not Washington State.”

I blink. I’ve been to Vancouver—on my world, not here—and it struck me as a perfectly lovely city. Gorgeous mountains that seem close enough to touch, great beaches, a huge park just off downtown full of ancient spruce and pine. Sort of a San Francisco vibe to the whole place, like all the hippie draft dodgers settled just over the border. “Yeah, so? Are we at war with Canada or something?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes. The so-called War on Drugs—Vancouver is a major center for the narcotics trade. We estimate there are thousands of Bane and Cloven labs and grow-ops scattered through the province of British Columbia.” Bane is wolfsbane cut with PCP—popular with thrope street gangs—while Cloven is garlic-infused methamphetamine, used by pire meth-heads. “They export it through the port, but they also smuggle a great deal into the US. The US–Canadian border is heavily barricaded and guarded, of course, but they keep finding ways across.”

I get a little rush of that feeling that used to be a lot more prevalent when I first got to Thropirelem: the sudden impact of a piece of information letting me know just how alien this place truly is. On my world, the US–Canadian border is the longest undefended border in the world; here, it sounds like Checkpoint Charlie.

“Okay. How’s our relationship with the Canadian cops?”

“Abysmal. The drug cartels dominate local politics, but they’re not the only players in town; Vancouver’s sort of a multicultural criminal melting pot. Zerkers control the waterfront. Chinese Triads and the Yakuza are prevalent in the downtown core, while the east side belongs largely to gangs from South America. Outlying areas like Burnaby, Surrey, and New Westminister are fought over by Vietnamese and Southeast Asian groups, notably the Death Dragons and the Sikh Warlords.” She pauses. “And then, of course, there’s the movie industry.”

“Sure. Of course.”

“Gangsters are always attracted to glamour. In Vancouver—much like in Las Vegas—they’ve decided to create their own. There’s an entire studio system in place, heavily financed by racketeering money and largely modeled after Hong Kong. Battles between the studios can be just as epic and violent as struggles over the drug trade, and frequently involve the same players.”

“On my world, people called Vancouver Hollywood North,” I say. “Lots of American film and TV production based there.” I shake my head. “This place sounds more like Juarez meets East LA.”

“It’s the homicide capital of the world, Jace. It’s entirely possible that pire children
are
disappearing there; that either the crime isn’t being reported, or it’s being covered up.”

“And we have no official jurisdiction?”

“Very little. Canada
is
a signatory to the Transnational Supernatural Crimes and Activities Act, but that presupposes the cooperation of local law enforcement—and that’s hard to come by. Should you decide to cross the border, the Agency won’t be able to offer you much in the way of support.”

“Which is probably exactly what Stoker wants. I have to say, Gretch, it doesn’t sound promising. I mean, Stoker’s a member of the Free Human Resistance—I find it hard to believe he cares about any supernatural, especially pire children. Pire children were why six million human beings were sacrificed to Shub-Niggurath, remember?”

Gretchen shrugs. “I know. It makes little sense—except as bait for a trap. Which suggests a rather darker possibility.”

“Ahaseurus.” It’s the name of the sorcerer who brought me across the dimensional divide at the behest of the NSA, though it turned out he had his own agenda. Ahaseurus is much more than just a government shaman; he’s a very old, very powerful wizard from yet another parallel world, and his hobby turned out to be killing me. Not me specifically; rather, all the different versions of me from all the different parallel worlds in the multiverse. The last time we’d met I’d thrown a very large monkey wrench into his plans, and he’d barely managed to escape with his life.

Thanks to Aristotle Stoker.

If they’re still working together, it’s another good news–bad news thing. Bad because, well, serial-killing immortal wizard with a Jace Valchek fixation. But good because I need to catch both of them in order to return home; my contract only specifies Stoker, but I need Ahaseurus for the actual spell. One way or another, I need to find both anyway.

“Stoker’s promised to send evidence supporting his claims,” Gretch says. “If and when such evidence arrives, my staff will analyze it thoroughly—if Ahaseurus is working with Stoker, we’ll be able to detect any mystical tampering and identify his signature. But if the intel turns out to be good, how would you like to proceed?”

I lean back in my chair and think about it. The fact that Gretch is asking is really only a formality; as acting director, she has the power to order me to do whatever she thinks is appropriate. Not that Gretch would pull that kind of power play—she’s much too smart. Which means she’s already figured out what my answer will be and has begun preparing for it.

“I go,” I say. “The proof will be good, or he wouldn’t bother. He knows I have to go after him anyway; I predict his information will provide a reason to keep him alive when I do.”

“It could still be a trap. He—or Ahaseurus—might be the ones taking the children.”

“Maybe so. But Stoker’s had the chance to kill me before, and hasn’t taken it.” Actually, it runs a little deeper than that—Stoker told me that killing me would be “a crime against humanity.” I don’t know about that, but I know he won’t kill
any
human if he can help it. “And if he is telling the truth—well, we can’t just ignore that, can we?”

“No. We cannot.” There’s no creature more bloodthirsty or savage than a mother protecting her young, and I’ve seen firsthand what Gretch is willing to do to protect hers. Even the prospect of children being threatened is enough to make my new boss’s eyes a little redder and her incisors a little pointier.

A thought crosses my mind. “Hey, I won’t have any trouble getting Charlie across the border, will I?”

“No, golems are fine. It’s human beings that have to show caution—you could very well become a kidnapping target yourself.”

“With Charlie around? Fat chance.” I get to my feet. “Of course, in an environment like that he’ll be breathing down my neck like a giant stone neck-breather…”

“I’ll let you know when we hear from Stoker again.”

“Do that,” I say over my shoulder. “In the meantime, I’m going to go see if I can do something about my ammo problem.”

*   *   *

“This—this is absolutely
weird,
” Damon Eisfanger says. He sounds very happy, which makes me want to throttle him.

I’m in his lab, a few floors away from the intel division. Eisfanger’s a forensics shaman, which means he combines sorcerous rituals and talismans with a scientific approach to pull data of all kinds from crime scenes. On my world, a good CSI can almost make a corpse talk; Eisfanger’s specialty is removing the word
almost.

Damon’s a thrope from a mixed pit bull–Arctic wolf heritage, which gives him the stocky build of a linebacker; pale, ice-blue eyes; and hair like a polar bear’s pelt. He’s something of a geek, in that overly friendly, not-clear-on-the-concept-of-personal-space way, but he’s got the IQ of a mad genius and the wide-eyed cheerfulness of a puppy. It’s impossible to hate Damon, but extremely easy to be irritated by him.

He’s perched on a stool, dressed in his usual white lab coat over a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, peering into a comparison microscope. He looks into one eyepiece, then the other, chuckling gleefully to himself. “I don’t believe it! I mean, I
literally
don’t believe it. I don’t think I
can
!”

“You do this
every time,
” I say tiredly. “I give you the sample. You take a look at it. You exclaim a few times about how bizarre it is. Then you wander away, get a sandwich, and completely forget about what you were doing.”

“I do?”

“Yes.
Every time
.”

“Huh. Do I always get a sandwich, or is that just verbal shorthand for any random task?”

“Four out of five times, sandwich. Once you went to the bathroom. Maybe you had a sandwich while you were in there, I don’t know.”

He looks thoughtful. “I see. Interesting. Brief amnesiac episodes, triggering basal metabolism functions—that’s mnemonic programming on a deep level…” He falls silent, an expression of intense concentration on his face.

“Damon.”

“What?”

“This is the part where you forget everything you just said.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. We were just talking about—” He frowns. “Going to the bathroom?”

I sigh. “We were talking about
gunpowder,
Damon. You know, the chemical mixture that explodes when ignited, causing bullets to fly out of the barrel of my gun really, really fast?”

He looks skeptical. “You know, every time you tell me that I have the feeling you’re pulling my leg.”

“I know. The spell, remember?”

“Oh, right. So
what
do you want, again?”

“I want you to
analyze
it, Damon. Break the gunpowder down to its component elements, tell me what each one is and the proportion that they’re mixed together in. Basic science. You can do that, right?”

“Hey, I’m kind of hungry. You want a sandwich?”

I am not going to shoot him. I’m
not
. I can’t waste the ammo.

“Look, I’ll make this simple. Just—just run a whole bunch of unmarked samples, okay? Like, two dozen. Don’t even try to match a particular analysis to a particular sample, just run them all, print out the results, and stick them in a box. If we can’t beat the spell, we’ll try to fool it.”

“I guess I can do that.” He still looks doubtful, but I can’t spend all day babysitting him while trying to outwit an ancient enchantment.

“I’ll call you later.”

“Uh, hang on,” he says. “Speaking of forgetting, I almost forgot. Your blood work came back this morning.”

Damon isn’t a doctor, per se, but I trust him—that’s why I had an analysis of my blood done by him instead of someone else. My immune system has just been through an epic battle with both the vampirism and lycanthropic viruses, and I want to verify that I’m still 100 percent human. “Yeah? Good news or bad news?”

“Good. You were infected by a thrope claw as opposed to a bite, right?”

Not to mention having my femoral artery sliced open at the same time. “Yeah. So?”

“So the virus that lives on thrope claws is slightly different from the one that lives on our teeth.”

“I know, Cassius told me. He said the claw version was actually more virulent.”

Damon nods. “It is. But having survived it, your immune system is now producing antibodies. I can’t be completely certain, but I don’t think you could be infected that way again.”

“Wait. Are you trying to tell me that the next time I go toe-to-toe with an enraged, seven-foot werewolf I only have to worry about his
jaws
?”

“From a strictly infectious point of view, yes. Of course, you could still be disemboweled or decapitated or have your limbs torn off—”

“You’re really not clear on how the good news–bad news thing works, are you?”

“—or get slashed to pieces or die by exsanguination. But you
don’t
have to worry about being turned into a thrope from a simple claw wound.” He pauses. “I’m pretty sure, anyway.”

“Terrific,” I say as I head for the door. “Do me a favor and try to stay away from the sandwiches, okay?” I check my watch as I step into the elevator; I should just be able to make my class.

*   *   *

When I first got to Thropirelem, I was more than a little overwhelmed. I hid that behind my usual combination of bloody-minded stubbornness and sarcasm, but one fact was inescapable: I was no longer the baddest badass in the room. Or in one
corner
of the room. Or even in that little supply closet just off the room, the one with the sawdust you’re supposed to spread on vomit and the mop that smells like rotting spinach. In fact, that little old lady on the corner with the plastic supermarket bag could probably go half-were and rip my throat out in less time than it takes her to buy kitty litter.

I do have a few things that help balance the equation, of course. My gun—which nobody takes seriously until I actually put a very large hole in something, and sometimes not even then; my badge; a pair of modified
eskrima
sticks with snap-out blades that turn them into razor-sharp silver scythes. But really, one of my biggest assets has always been my martial arts training—I’ve been studying since I was ten. It’s helped give me the self-confidence you need in a male-dominated profession, which unfortunately seems to be most of them.

That asset is all but worthless here. Pires and thropes are stronger, faster, and really hard to hurt. Not that hard to kill, if you know what you’re doing, but lethal force is not always the best option. My knowledge of
kali
, Filippino stick fighting, helps a lot—but even with the scythes, I still have the speed and strength problems. Plus, it makes me far more reliant on my weapons than I’m comfortable with.

So I started my own dojo. Because, hey, those who can, do, and those who can’t, teach.

I can practically feel my old sensei smack me in the back of the head for that remark, and I deserve it. I have nothing but the highest respect for the teachers I’ve had in my life; it’s myself as a purveyor of knowledge I’m a little down on. It seemed like a brilliant idea at the time—make something here that was truly mine, create my own community—but the reality of the situation is proving a little less rosy.