Dead Streets (9 page)

  His answer might be a bit on the stalkerish side but Lazlo's always been there when I needed him, so I did my best to ignore the creepiness factor.

  Lazlo's cab is a patchwork monstrosity cobbled together from metal and swaths of what I hope is animal hide and I've seen the vehicle open its hood to reveal a very large mouthful of sharp teeth. I'm careful to avoid walking too near the front of the cab just in case it isn't too picky about what it eats.

  Given the bizarre nature of Lazlo's ride I wasn't sure it had anything resembling a suspension but, if it did, it was in dire need of new shock absorbers. I felt every little dip and bump in the road as if they were major seismic events and if Devona hadn't been holding me in her lap and steadying me by keeping her hand on top of my head, I'd have been bouncing around the cab's interior like a giant pinball covered in rotting meat. In her other hand Devona held the compass Papa Chatha had given us. In place of its missing needle it now had one of my back teeth. As we navigated the twisting, winding streets of the Sprawl the tooth spun slowly around as it tried to get a fix on my missing body.

  I thought back to Papa's extraction of the tooth. It had taken him several minutes to pry the thing loose from my jaw and the entire time I was giving thanks to whatever deity might be listening that the nerve endings in my mouth were as dead as the rest of me.

  We weren't simply relying on the tooth compass to locate my body, though. Papa had also promised to put the word out on the street that someone had stolen my body. I might've made my fair share of enemies over the years but I've made plenty of friends, too, and Papa would make sure they were all keeping their ears to the ground for any word of what might've happened to my body or who might be responsible.

  "Magic's all well and good," he'd said. "But sometimes friends are more help than the most powerful spell."

  Devona – always security-conscious – had worried that putting the word out about my current condition would let my enemies know that I was vulnerable to attack, but Papa had promised he'd be discreet about who he spoke to and we decided to leave it at that.

  Lazlo glanced in the rearview mirror at us, an action which never failed to alarm me. The way Lazlo drives it's never a good idea for him to take his gaze off the road.

  "What's the range on that thing?" he asked.

  "Papa wasn't definite," I told him. "A couple miles, give or take, was his best guess. We'll just have to drive around until the compass gets a hit."

  "No prob. I'm at your service for as long as it takes. We may have to stop and refuel, but maybe we'll get lucky and my cab'll find something to snack on along the way."

  "I hope you're joking," I said.

  Lazlo burst out with another of his deafening laughs.

  "You're a funny guy, Matt!"

  Thankfully I was spared from having to learn anything more about his vehicle's dietary needs when Lazlo turned on the radio. A DJ's voice full of exaggerated enthusiasm blared from the tinny speakers.

  "You're tuned to Bedlam 66.6, Nekropolis's hit machine! Coming up this hour we'll have tunes from Hard Rock Zombies, The Crypt Kicker Five, and Jude's Hammer, but first here's a blast from the past from Kakophonie, in honor of Scream Queen
not
losing her voice tonight. Better luck next time, Overkill!"

  I groaned as the band's so called music blasted through the cab. Sometimes Nekropolis is more like a gossipy small town than a large city and word about any scandal – the juicier the better – travels more swiftly than a flock of vampire bats equipped with jet packs.

  "I hope Overkill didn't hear that," Devona said. "She'll be more determined than ever to get back at you." She paused. "That is, if she isn't the one who stole your body in the first place."

  It was true. As pissed off as Overkill undoubtedly was at me, the last thing I needed was for people to start gossiping about how I'd stopped her. The bad publicity would only turn her already fiery fury to a white-hot incandescence.

  "I'll worry about that later," I said. "First, I have to find my other half."

  "I thought I was your other half," Devona said.

  "No, you're my
better
half."

  Devona gently ruffled my hair. "You're sweet. Hopefully we'll be able to locate your body soon. But if we don't… well, things won't change between us. You know that, right?"

  "Yes."

  As I might have mentioned earlier I'm not anatomically functional in certain areas but, with Devona's ability to create a mindlink between us, I didn't need to be. We're able to join on the astral plane, merging spirits in a way that's more deep and profound than any physical lovemaking could ever be. As long as my mind was intact we'd still be able to bond psychically, although the prospect of Devona carting me around in a hatbox the rest of our lives didn't exactly appeal to me. I forced myself not to think about that. Back on Earth I'd never been the type to borrow trouble and my time in Nekropolis – where living, dead, or somewhere in between, existence is precarious at best and fleeting at worst – had only strengthened that trait.

  Instead I turned my thoughts to the conversation Devona and I had before I'd left the Midnight Watch. I'd been telling myself that I kept apart from Devona's business so as not to interfere, but now I wondered if that wasn't just an excuse. Maybe I hadn't gotten to know her employees because I hadn't wanted to bother. Not long after we'd first met Devona told me that I'd died inside a long time before my physical body did. Her observation had hurt at the time, all the more so because she was right. I'd been trying to be more emotionally available – as a therapist might put it – ever since, but I still wasn't very good at it. The next time any of the Midnight Watch team invited me out for a drink after work maybe I should accept, I thought. Unless it was Bogdan.

  "Devona, about the things I said earlier…"

  I felt her hand atop my head tense.

  "Don't worry about that now, Matt," she said, just a little too quickly. "For now, let's concentrate on finding your body."

  Her words were delivered in a calm, rational tone, but through our link I could feel how much she was still hurting. As strong and intelligent as she was I still sometimes forgot how much she depended on my support and tonight I'd failed to give it – or at least, it seemed that way to her, and that was all that mattered.

  But she didn't want to talk about it right then and I had to respect that. And truthfully, I was grateful to postpone what promised to be an uncomfortable conversation a little while longer. So I tried to send a psychic message through our link, a combination of
I'm
sorry
and
I love you
. I didn't know if she received it or not, but she patted my head and even though it made me feel a bit like a cute pet sitting on his owner's lap, it reassured me.

  Lazlo drove on and Devona and I continued to watch the tooth compass, waiting for it to indicate where my body was.

  It was well after midnight but the Sprawl is always open for business. The streets were thick with traffic and Lazlo wove erratically in and out of lanes with disturbing regularity, earning a multitude of raised middle fingers – many with claws on the tip – horn blasts and snarls from the more feral drivers. At one point he nearly sideswiped the Headless Horseman and ended up with splattered pumpkin smeared across his rear window. I was just glad the Horseman hadn't glanced into the cab and seen me or else the specter might've been tempted to replace his missing head with mine. Then again, if he had, at least I'd experienced a smoother ride on the back of his ghostly steed than I would've in the backseat of Lazlo's nightmare conglomeration of a cab.

  We crisscrossed the Sprawl, cruising the main drag of Sybarite Street and passing such well-known landmarks as the Freakatorium and the Grotesquerie, as well as the House of Dark Delights and Pandemonia. We even circled the high rise of Demon's Roost, the seat of Varvara's power. But no matter where we went my tooth continued its slow rotation around the compass's face, never once indicating my body might be near.

  We drove past the crystalline pyramid that was the Eidolon Building where the city's major media outlets were housed. The
Daily Tome
, Bedlam 66.6 and Mind's Eye Theatre all have offices there and I wondered if even then Acantha was inside, seething over how I'd humiliated her on the air and planning revenge – assuming she hadn't already taken it by stealing my body, that is. But if she had orchestrated the theft of my body it wasn't located anywhere near the Eidolon Building, according to the compass.

  Our drive continued like this for several hours and I'd just about resigned myself to living the rest of my unlife as a talking head when the tooth finally swiveled to point northeast of our current location.

  Devona told Lazlo and I followed up by ordering him to step on it.

  I immediately regretted my words as the cab shot forward as if suddenly rocket propelled. Devona lost her grip on me and I tumbled to the floor and bounced around a bit before she managed to get hold of me again and settle me back onto her lap. The severed head routine, to use a metaphor that technically didn't apply at that moment, was becoming a real pain in the ass.

  Devona kept a close eye on the tooth compass and called out course corrections to Lazlo as he drove. Fifteen minutes and uncountable traffic violations later we found ourselves at the edge of the Sprawl, close to its border with the Wyldwood, the Dominion of the lykes. The businesses there tend to cater toward their shapeshifter neighbors, mostly restaurants that served hunks of raw meat and mugs of blood – few self-respecting lykes would go near a glass of aqua sanguis. They'd rather drink animal blood just as long as it was the real thing. Devona instructed Lazlo to pull up to a rundown shack of a restaurant called Tooth and Claw. He parked in front of the establishment, earning wrinkled noses and low throated growls of disapproval from a group of lykes on the sidewalk. But the cab just growled right back and the lykes suddenly remembered a pressing engagement elsewhere and departed.

  "Keep the motor running, Lazlo," Devona said.

  "No problem. Holler if you need help, though."

  I promised we would, then Devona opened the door and, holding me tucked beneath her arm, climbed out of the cab. In her other hand she held the tooth compass and she kept her gaze fixed on it as she stepped onto the sidewalk.

  "You think the restaurant owner stole my body because their scavenger customers have been craving filet of zombie?"

  I was joking – mostly. But lykes came in all types, not just the typical werewolf kind. Werehyenas, werevultures… there were any number of lykes who preferred decayed meat to fresh.

  "Let's hope not," Devona said, not taking her eyes off the compass. "Otherwise, while we might be able to get the bulk of your body back, we'll have to wait a while, and I don't think you'll appreciate the state it's in once we recover it."

  "I didn't realize you possessed a crude streak, Ms. Kanti."

  "Must be the bad influence of the company I've been keeping lately, Mr. Richter." She paused. "Bad news. The compass is pointing directly at the restaurant. Should we go in?"

  I thought about it. Without my body I didn't have my jacket and that meant I didn't have any of the various toys I carry around for dealing with occasional annoyances, like a restaurant filled with territorial lykes who would be less than thrilled to have a half-vampire carrying a zombie head enter their establishment. Most lykes can't stand the smell of undead flesh, zombies in particular, so neither of us would receive a warm welcome if we went inside.

  "Let's go around the back," I suggested. "Maybe we'll find a way to sneak in."

  In lyke culture the strongest predators have the highest status and the lower ranking predators, along with the herbivores, serve them. So the kitchen staff would be composed of lower caste lykes, which meant they'd be easier to deal with than the alphas dining at the Tooth and Claw. At least, that's what I hoped.

  Devona carried me down an alley alongside the ramshackle building. I had a few bad moments when we passed a group of carrion imps sifting through a pile of trash – I'll never look at the little bastards the same way again – but otherwise we made it to the other side of the alley without any trouble.

  The rear of the Tooth and Claw looked like the back of any other restaurant: Dumpster alongside the aisle wall, back entrance lit by a single light overhead, a metal bucket lying on the ground next to the door to collect cigarette butts and gnawed clean bones left by staff during breaks.

  I was trying to come up with some kind of story that we could use to tell the kitchen staff to get them to let us in and take a look around when Devona stopped walking.

  "Uh, Matt? The tooth isn't pointing to the restaurant any more. It's pointing to the Dumpster."

  I wondered then if my earlier joke hadn't proved prophetic, if maybe some lyke chef had carved the dead meat from my bones for his scavenger customers and then tossed my bones into the Dumpster. After all, the tooth compass was designed to locate my body – or what was left of it. There was no guarantee what state my body would be in when we found it.

  The Dumpster lid was down, and fearing the worst, I told Devona to open it. She tucked the compass into a back pocket – though considering how tight her leather pants were, I have no idea how she managed to do it – and then reached up with her free hand, gripped the Dumpster lid, and threw it open. As short as she is she couldn't see into the Dumpster, so she gripped my hair and held me up as high as she could so I could take a look. There, lying atop a mound of animal bones and bloody rags, lay my body. The arms and legs were askew but they didn't appear to be broken and aside from the wound on my neck where my head had been attached, my body looked none the worse for our time apart.