Darkwalker: A Tale of the Urban Shaman (22 page)

As the sky turned to purple, I finished my stretching and set out on my run. I wasn’t looking forward to the unfolding of this next piece of badness. Wanting to get it over with, yeah, but not looking forward to what that would entail. I knew I was probably going to have to face a monster. What I didn’t expect was a bunch of people out to kill me.

The first fucker came out of the bushes to my right and very nearly clotheslined me. He was almost fast enough. There was no stopping, so I basically clotheslined on my own a nanosecond before impact and spun at the same time, turning it into a flying kick. He went down. I alit on toes and fingers, scanned... Three more coming at me. I moved to meet them.

They had some kind of training, I’ll give them that. Rok’s better than I am at hand-to-hand. He probably would have taken them down faster and more efficiently, but I did alright. The wide guy in front of me on the path was the more serious threat. Weasel and Schlub coming up behind me were followers; Wide Guy was a leader, dark-haired, bullet-headed, with a look of determination about him. I ducked under his left and jabbed to his ribs as I stepped forward to pivot, putting him between me and the others. The Clothesliner was starting to stir now. Wide Guy came at me again, fast, and I dodged and got in a kick to his midsection that doubled him over, followed by one to the head that put him down. Weasel almost tripped over him, to recover himself and receive a kick that sent him sprawling. Schlub moved in, not fast, but big and beefy, hulking, strong, though not skilled. I broke his nose and one leg. The Clothesliner was now headed toward me, and Wide Guy was stirring. I kicked WG again and turned to meet the Clothesliner, when my head exploded. Either that, or some giant with one of those huge clubs with the big spike on the end had buried it in my temple.

I’d never been shot before. I’ve been in plenty of fights over my years as a Railwalker, and I’m sorry to say I’d shot a couple of men in my time. I’d been shot
at
before; I’ve had bullets whizzing by my head in a firefight; but I’d never actually been hit. It was, as they say, a unique experience.

There was an explosion of white light and pain, then everything went black for a moment and I went down. Training must have kicked in despite unconsciousness, and my body must have gotten up again on its own, since the next thing I knew I was upright again as the path swam back into view, my vision blurry.

I took a deep breath, and there was a flash like lightning, or a photo flash. I staggered, but somehow managed to stay upright. Was someone taking pictures? Where the hell was I? I couldn’t remember anything. This, I thought, was bad. Several bodies sprawled on the dark path around me. Instinct alone told me they were not my friends, and probably I had put them there. I looked at the big guy getting slowly to his feet. Another one was starting to stir, too. Yeah, this could be very bad. I took another deep breath and saw another flash of lightning. There was incredible pain in my head, but I knew I could turn it off, because I had no other choice. It was seriously time for taking care of business. I could still come out of this alive. I could beat these guys, but it was gonna cost me. Bad.

I realized I was swaying; my body wanted to fall down. My head pounded. I pushed the pain away and focused on staying upright. Go on autopilot, I told myself. Don’t think about it, just finish these guys off like you would in the dojo. As I started to move toward the big one, who was actually standing now, a voice shouted, “City guard! Freeze!”

I froze, with one wary eye on the big guy and the other on the one stirring on the ground. It had sounded, I thought, like a familiar voice. City guard... I was in a city. Right, Bay City. Investigator Auden’s voice. Several more bodies now appeared out of the darkness; then, everything went black again.

I opened my eyes to see the stars above me. They looked somehow wrong. None of the constellations I knew were there. Then I heard someone crouch down on the gravel beside my head. I knew it was the Wolf.

When the Wolf Spirit first came to me and we joined as allies, he came in the form of a real wolf—a timber wolf, to be precise. Since that time, he’s shown up in human form as well; an old black man in a rumpled black suit, a young white guy who looks and dresses like a Ravager from the zones, all beat up leathers and dirty jeans. Then sometimes he’s something in between—a man with the head of a wolf. Once, he showed up as a wolf with the head of a man. I have to admit, that one was a little disturbing.

Mostly I don’t let this shapeshifting throw me off. The Old Ones don’t have a real form; they can appear as whatever they like. Somehow I always know it’s him, regardless of what form he takes. Of course, Wolf’s got nothing on Coyote, where that sort of thing is concerned. I’ve met Coyote, too, a few times, and while I sometimes enjoy his company, I’m glad my ally is Wolf. Wolf’s enough of a pain in the arse as it is.

“
You’re on a hunt here,” he said, “and you didn’t bother to ask my advice?” He was in his wolfman form, a man’s body with a wolf’s head, cowboy boots, jeans, and one of those flat-brimmed hats the Angelos wear. His ears stuck up through the brim, and I found myself briefly picturing him cutting holes for them, before I realized he wouldn’t have to do that; the hat’s no more real than the rest of his appearance. He was rolling a cigarette.

“
Yeah, sorry,” I told him. “I hadn’t really thought of it that way.”

“
What other way is there to think of it?”

“
Yeah, well, just color me stupid and make with the sage advice, okay?” I said. “I’m probably bleeding out on the Riverwalk back in the world right now, so maybe you could skip the esoteric lecture and just cut to where you tell me how to track this Beast down?”

He chuckled, lit his cigarette with an antique Zippo. “What, you’re anxious to get back to bleeding to death?”

“
What do you want me to do, prostrate myself before you in apology?”

“
No,” he said, suddenly deadly serious. “I just want you to think like the animal you’re named for, you stupid bastard. You know there’s no such thing as a lone wolf. We hunt as a pack.” He didn’t say that not consulting him, leaving the most experienced hunter of my pack out of the hunt, was a stupid move. He didn’t have to.

He smoked in silence for a moment, looking off at the horizon. Finally he looked at me again. “We hunt in the territories we know. We hunt the prey we know. If we’re smart, we leave the strongest to breed. That keeps the pool of possible prey growing. Look at the prey. A beast’s prey, and how the beast takes it, tells you everything you need to know in order to stalk it.”

“
Dammit,” I said, “I’ve been looking at the prey, and hardly anything else. I’m not seeing the pattern.”

“
You’re seeing the pattern fine. What you’re not seeing is the chaos.”

We looked at each other in silence for a moment. There was obviously some profound and important meaning in this that he expected me to pick up on, but it seemed pretty opaque to me. There was a lot of chaos going on in this case. I didn’t think I was missing any of that. But it wasn’t telling me anything. He meant something else, something that just wasn’t clicking. He stood up, pinching out the butt and storing it in a pocket.

“
Go deal with your bleeding problem,” he said. “Just don’t forget to check in later.”

Everything went black again.

There were crows on the buildings outside my infirmary room window. I couldn’t see them, but I could hear them. As far back as I can remember I’ve noticed crows around me. I didn’t connect them with my dreams and visions at first, just took them as part of the moving landscape, like people and cars, pigeons and ornithopters. It wasn’t until my mother appeared to me in a vision that I began to think of them as something else.

The standard dogma is that souls don’t revisit the earth. There’s no way to come back, no way for the living to make contact with the actual souls of the dead. There are ghosts—snatches of memory caught in the landscape, impressed on the walls and floors, scored into the dirt, memories that replay over and over. There’s no real consciousness in them; it’s almost like a short DV loop. Then there are shades, which have a certain amount of consciousness—leftover residue from the conscious mind and personality, no longer really informed by the soul. They tend to degrade and dissipate over a fairly short period of time.

The living can only contact the souls of the dead when the soul is between leaving the body moving on into the light. Once they’ve gone over, they’re gone for good. At least, that’s the theory.

I never argued with the profs at the Academy about that. Never told them the spirit of my mother had visited me several times over the course of my life. Maybe they were right. Maybe it wasn’t my mother, but a piece of my own mind that spoke to me with an imagined voice. Maybe I was just hallucinating. Or maybe it was some other, non-human spirit, appearing in her form; that’s been known to happen now and then.

Whatever it was, her advice always seemed to be good. And truth to tell, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the reality of it.

I think I was seven or eight the first time she appeared. About the same time I got her picture from my Pa. Maybe it was some connection through the picture, or maybe the picture just gave me an image to fit where a void had been before. I dunno, really. But I’m pretty sure it saved my life.

It was at a card game in Monteague. One of the players didn’t like having a kid around, so I was waiting in the hall that night. I remember sitting on the floor, playing tic-tack on the cheap little handheld my father had given me a week or so before. The wall at my back was old sheetrock covered with about a million coats of paint that sealed in a similar number of coats of dirt. The wall across was cinderblock, slathered with the same puke-colored paint, the mortar lines still visible, but the pores of the blocks so often painted over they were no more than a slightly uneven texture. I looked up from the handheld, and there was my mother coming down the hall. She spoke my name, held out her hand, and said, “Come with me.”

I didn’t even think about it, just got up and put my hand in hers; we walked out into the parking lot, and across to my Pop’s runabout. Just as we reached the vehicle I heard gunshots. I turned around and looked back, dropping her hand for a moment, and saw my father come flying out the window. There were more shots. Pa hit the ground rolling, jumped up and started toward the door. I realized he was going back for me.

“
Pa!” I shouted.

He saw me, pivoted, and came running toward me. I turned and my mother was gone. I was glancing around wildly, trying to find her, when my Pop swept me up and into the runabout. He tossed me inside, and I crashed against the passenger door as I heard the engine roar to life. I was stunned, the breath knocked out of me, and couldn’t protest at leaving my mother behind, but could only whine weakly as we spun out of the parking lot.

By the time I had my breath back I realized that my mother was probably dead, and it had been her spirit, not her physical self, that had saved me. The other thing I realized was that the roof of the building had been swarming with crows, and for some reason I found myself wondering if they had come there with my mother. I never said any of this to my father, of course.

I’d learned a lot about the crows since then. All Railwalkers do. We each have our personal connection to some animal ally, but all of us also have a relationship with Crow, the totem of our order. As I lay in my bed in the City Center infirmary, the sound of the crows outside was a comfort. If I’d been about to die, they’d have appeared inside the room with me.

Turns out I was lucky. My attackers were disgruntled guardsmen, out to teach the interloper a lesson, not to kill anybody, so they hadn’t come loaded for bear. Service weapons had been left behind. The one who shot me had panicked and drawn his ankle weapon. It was only a .22, but any gun is deadly if you use it right. He hadn’t used it right. He had clipped the side of my head, resulting in a wound that bled a hell of a lot and knocked me unconscious, but wasn’t horribly dangerous. The doctors were relieved to find no sign of something they called a counter coup injury to the brain. I had one hell of a headache and got occasional lightning flashes in my right eye, which was so bloodshot it looked like a three ball from a pool table. I remembered stretching out for my run, watching the sun set over the bay, but nothing else until my conversation with the Wolf spirit. They told me the missing memories might or might not return in a few days. Later turned out they were right.

They let me out of the infirmary the following day, though not without some protest from the doctors. Rok and Morgan helped me back to our rooms.

“
By the way,” Morgan said. “I found the Huey pendant.”

“
No shit? The one from the
Bay Queen
?”

She held up a bulky manila envelope. “The very one,” she said.

“
Where’d you find it?”

“
Auden had it. He was a friend of Hawthorne’s. I promised to bring it back in one piece. Do the docs say it’s safe for you to use your Brickish superpowers?”

“
Between the injury and the drugs they gave me, last day or so I’ve spent more than half my time with one foot in another reality. I’m not going to bust a gasket in my head trying to read something. In fact, it would probably be easier than usual.”