Dead Streets (18 page)

  "What do you call a zombie in jail?"

  "I don't know, Rondo. What?"

  Thick lips pulled back from large yellowed teeth as he smiled.

  "My bitch."

  He raised those giant hands of his and started toward me.

 
 

  Despite his ungainly appearance, Rondo could move swift and silent when he wished – hence his nickname Creeper – and he was nearly on me before I could react. But after everything I'd been through since saving Scream Queen's voice, I wasn't exactly in the mood to dance with the ugly sonofabitch.

  While I keep most of my weapons in my suit jacket, I'm not dumb enough to keep all of them there. I was grateful for Keket's sloppy security. Perhaps she'd assumed that Quillion's people had searched me thoroughly and had removed any weapons I might be carrying before sending me to her. If Devona had been here she'd had given the undead sorceress a stern lecture on basic security protocols. I reached into my pants pocket and removed a small yellow sphere no larger than a pill, but this medicine wasn't supposed to be taken internally.

  As Rondo came at me I threw the sphere to the ground and it burst upon impact. A cloud of yellow gas billowed upward, catching Rondo in the face. He stumbled to a stop and clapped those huge hands of his over his mouth and nose to keep from breathing any of the gas in, but it was too late. His already bulging eyes bugged out even further as they began to water. He took in two hitching breaths and then released a truly impressive sneeze that, if I hadn't braced myself, might've knocked me off my feet.

  "As you've undoubtedly guessed by now, you've just inhaled a couple of lungfuls of the strongest sneezing powder in the city. There aren't many benefits to being dead, Rondo, but no longer having to breathe is one of them."

  I'd picked up the powder at the same place where I get a lot of my toys – at Hop Frog's Delight, the best joke shop in Nekropolis. The dwarf who owns the place is an absolute genius when it comes to creating practical jokes and he handcrafts each one personally. But you have to be careful. As a joke on his customers, Hop Frog designed his jokes to randomly burst into flame upon activation – for some reason the jester has a thing about fire. Maybe they'll go off the first time you use them, maybe not until the seventh time. You never know, and for that reason, at Hop Frog's it's very much
caveat emp
tor.

  The cloud of itching powder was spreading and those inmates who were standing too close to Rondo and me quickly drew back to keep from inhaling any of the stuff. As for Rondo he was doubled over and sneezing so hard he could barely catch a breath. Hop Frog's jokes are extremely powerful and I wondered if Rondo was in danger of sneezing himself to death. Given the number of people who'd met their demises at the overlarge hands of the Creeper, the prospect of the man's death didn't exactly fill me with sorrow.

  Rondo's super sized sneezing fit attracted the guards' attention and several of the jackalheaded musclemen were making their way toward us, plowing through the crowd of inmates, shouldering them aside and – if they didn't move fast enough – giving them a short blast of energy from their golden speartips. The guards weren't the only ones coming. Several of the silvery floating devices I'd seen from the overhead railing were heading in my direction, gliding soundlessly through the air. Now that I was closer I could see that the objects were levitating silver skulls about three times the size of a human skull. They reminded me of the skull sentry I'd encountered at the Foundry's main gate. These were more of Victor Baron's creations, I assumed, this type designed to provide additional security in Tenebrus. There were probably living brains housed within those metallic craniums that were even now sizing up the situation and deciding what to do about this disturbance in the general population. An instant later I got an inkling of what the flying skulls' response was going to be when their hollow eye sockets began to glow with ruby colored light.

  I felt a tug on my elbow and a voice whispered urgently in my ear.

  "Quick! Come with me if you want to live!"

  I decided now wasn't the time to point out the irony in my newfound benefactor's statement and I allowed him to pull me away from Rondo, who was still sneezing so loud I figured it was even money that he would cough up at least one lung before any of the guards could reach him.

  As I was led through the crowd of inmates I took a good look at the being who was pulling me along. It was a verman, although he was larger than usual, almost my height, and he was a true albino with white fur and red eyes. He wore a green frock coat with white ruffles at the sleeves and brass buttons down the front. I was surprised to see one of his species in Tenebrus. As mild and servile as vermen usually are they almost never cause any trouble, let alone commit crimes. I'd never seen a white furred verman before, nor had I ever seen one dressed so fancy. Something strange was going on here, but that didn't surprise me: something strange is always going on in Nekropolis. Weird is our stock in trade, after all.

  The verman led me on a winding path across the canyon floor and while the inmates we passed glared at me none of them made a move to stop us. What's more none of them looked at the verman at all. They deliberately ignored him as if he were beneath their notice. At least that's what I thought at first, but as he continued to lead me, I saw that they made a point of getting out of his way. Most of them tried to appear casual about it, but it was obvious to me that they were showing deference to the verman, which was unheard of.

  After a while we reached one of the canyon walls and the verman finally stopped. We stood close to a large semicircular opening which I recognized as a lair for one of the giant scarabs I'd seen earlier. I started to tell the verman that I didn't think this was the safest place to stand, but he put a finger to his mouth to shush me while he reached into a pocket with his other hand. He removed a large white cube and tossed it into the mouth of the entrance. Quick as a flash, a giant scarab darted forward, snatched up the cube in its mandibles, and scuttled backward into its lair. When the mammoth insect was gone, the albino verman visibly relaxed.

  "It's safe to talk now. It won't bother us for a while." He gave a soft, snuffling laugh. "Those things are crazy for sugar."

  This verman's manner was different from any of his kind I had ever encountered before. He stood up straight and looked me in the eye when he spoke and his tone contained no trace of servility. He talked to me as if we were equals and I knew this was no ordinary verman I was dealing with.

  "My name is Gnasher," he said. "And you're Matthew Richter."

  He held out his slender rodent hand for me to shake and I did so. When I let go he used his claws to rapidly scratch the fur under his chin and I saw several fleas fall to the ground.

  "It's no wonder you know my name," I said, doing my best not to think about how many fleas Gnasher had remaining. "Keket made sure to announce my arrival loudly enough."

  "True. The warden loves to stir up trouble down here. She gets off on watching the various little dramas that take place among the general population. Brawls, assassinations, gang wars… The bloodier the spectacle, the more she likes it." Gnasher pointed to one of the flying skulls floating off in the distance. "That's an Overwatcher. They're Keket's eyes and ears. Whatever they see and hear, she does too."

  "I'm surprised we gave them the slip so easily, then," I said.

  "There might not be many places to hide down here, but there are a lot of people. That helps. But I've got something that helps even more."

  "What's that?"

  Gnasher grinned, displaying a mouthful of long, narrow, flat-edged rat teeth. "A subcutaneous implant that renders me invisible to the Overwatchers' sensors. As long as you stay close to me, they won't be able to detect you either." He gave another of his snuffling laughs.

  I frowned. "That kind of tech doesn't sound like standard issue for prisoners."

  Gnasher's grin widened. "It's not, but then, I'm not a prisoner. And I knew who you were and that you were coming long before Keket made her announcement. In fact, I was waiting for you."

  "Who are you? You don't act like any verman I've ever met. And why did you help me? Not that I'm ungrateful, but this doesn't strike me as the kind of place where altruism ranks high on the list of survival skills."

  Another laugh. "
That's
an understatement! No altruism on my part. It's payback. You saved the life of one of our people at Sinsation, when Overkill failed to steal Scream Queen's voice."

  I remembered the verman waiter who would've gotten skewered by one of Overkill's weapons if I hadn't stepped in and intercepted it.

  Gnasher went on.

  "Most people in the city wouldn't have bothered to save him, wouldn't have even seen him as someone worth saving. But not you. You saw his life as valuable enough to risk your own to protect it."

  "Look, I was glad to keep the waiter from getting shish-kabobbed, but don't make me out to be something I'm not. I'm a zombie. I don't feel pain. It's no big deal for me to take a wound to protect someone."

  "Maybe so but you still saved his life and for that we owe you. And we always pay our debts, Matthew.
Al
ways
. Besides, Skully has spoken highly of you over the years and we trust his judgment."

  Skully is a friend of mine, a bar owner with ties to the Dominari, Nekropolis's version of the Mafia. Despite being on different sides of the law we've always gotten along well and he's helped me out with cases on more than one occasion.

  A suspicion was beginning to form in my mind.

  "So you work for the Dominari too?"

  Gnasher let out another snufflelaugh and scratched behind one of his ears. "
For
the Dominari! Don't you get it? We vermen
are
the Dominari!"

  Gnasher went on to tell me more about the true nature of the Dominari, and while at first I found his story unbelievable, the more I thought about it all, the more sense it made. I'd lived and worked in Nekropolis for years and I dealt with the city's criminal element on a regular basis. But while I'd met plenty of people who one way or another worked for the Dominari, I'd never actually encountered a member of that criminal organization in person. The Dominari did its business in secret and kept the identities of its members well concealed. Not even Skully would tell me anything about the people he worked for. I'd always imagined the Dominari as a combination crime cartel and spy agency, with hidden headquarters located somewhere in the Sprawl. But the one thing I'd never considered was that the Dominari might be hiding in plain sight.

  "My people came to Nekropolis during the Descension with the other Darkfolk, and as the city began to develop, we realized there was opportunity for us here. You see, my kind has always been pragmatic, willing to do things that others find distasteful in order to survive and thrive. Where others see mounds of trash, we see discarded resources to be recovered and made use of. Where others see nothing but rotting carrion, we see food going to waste. And when the Darkfolk began to build their city's infrastructure, complete with laws and legitimate businesses, we knew a shadow economy would inevitably develop. In this respect, the Darkfolk are no different than humans. Crime is a fact of life and if there was going to be crime in our new home my people decided not only would we take advantage of it, we'd run it. And so the Dominari was born. The Darkfolk already looked down upon us as lower lifeforms, so we used that as camouflage, acting docile and hiring ourselves out cheap as manual laborers and servants. We quickly infiltrated every level of society, allowing us access to all manner of information, for we made ourselves such a common part of everyday life – just another bit of background scenery – that few people noticed us, and even fewer guarded their tongues in our presence. Positioned as we were, we were able to take advantage of every business opportunity that came our way and over the years the Dominari grew strong. If there was a criminal enterprise in the city that we didn't own outright, we took a cut of the profits. We became rich as any Darklord – richer, even – and in our own way, just as powerful."

  Gnasher's revelation completely changed my view of Nekropolis and as I struggled to process what he'd told me a thought occurred to me.

  "Why haven't the Darklords done anything to stop you? Why hasn't Dis? Surely they must know the truth about you."

  Gnasher grinned. "We've made ourselves such an integral part of how the city works, that if you destroyed us, Nekropolis's entire economy would collapse. Dis and the Darklords learned about us long ago, but they view us as a necessary evil and as long as we don't interfere with their personal business they leave us alone for the most part. From time to time they make token strikes at us to placate their subjects and make them think something is being done to curtail crime in the city, but afterward everything returns to normal."