Undead to the World (11 page)

I frown. “So he’s like a giant four-leaf clover and supernatural Prozac, in handy
two-legged form?”

Cassiar smiles. “I suppose. Who wouldn’t want an endless supply of happiness and good
luck? Especially when you could inflict the opposite on your enemies?”

He has a point. It’s a little undefined for my tastes, but I’m getting the feeling
that’s how magic works—it’s always a little fuzzy around the edges. “So as long as
the Gallowsman hangs around—sorry—the cult does a happy dance and never rolls snake
eyes. Not great for anyone hunting them, right? And speaking of which,
what does any of this have to do with me
?”

I didn’t really intend to raise my voice like that, but I’m a little surprised at
Cassiar’s reaction. He looks … sad.

“Summoning an otherworldly entity always requires a sacrifice, but in the case of
the Gallowsman, it’s a little different. He’s drawn to pain—emotional torment. From
what I’ve been able to find out, you’re supposed to be the source of that torment.”

Well, that would explain the pictures. “So they’re planning on using me as bait? Torture
me and wait for the Gallowsman to show up?”

“I believe so, yes.”

“Well then, I guess you don’t have all the answers after all, Mr. Cassiar. Because
unless our local pastor managed to hang himself from the eaves of a three-story building
without a window or a ladder, the Gallowsman is already
here.
You were right about one thing, though—he didn’t come alone. You want to meet a genuine,
unalive vampire? Keep your eyes out for our local greengrocer, Jimmy Zhang—he’s suddenly
developed a real sweet tooth. If, you know, by sweet you mean blood and by tooth you
mean teeth. And while none have actually shown up yet, I have it on good authority
that the lupine contingent are going to be putting in an appearance, too.”

I’m a little out of breath by the end, but once I started I couldn’t stop. It was
like I had this bizarre need to prove myself to him, as if we were comparing schizophrenic
stories and mine just had to be crazier.

He regards me calmly. He looks more thoughtful than worried. “I see,” he says at last.
“It seems I’ve miscalculated the timing. Things are further along than I thought.”

“You think?”

“Jace,” Charlie says. “Calm down. What we’ve got to do is figure out how to handle
this.”

“Handle? Handle? We’ve got a demon with a rope fetish, a murderous cult, and half
the cast of a horror movie, all inside the city limits of a town you can walk across
in twenty minutes! And that’s
if
you stop and talk to all the people you know along the way, only you won’t because
they might
eat you!
”

“Your friend Charlie is right, Jace. We need to find a way to quietly contain the
situation—”

“Quiet? No, no, no. Quiet time is
over
. Now is wide-awake, the house is on fire and we need to
do
something time.”

Charlie gives Cassiar a glance he thinks I don’t notice. I do, but I don’t bother
responding. “You know what this is? This is that moment in the movie or book or comic
where the good guys screw everything up. This is where they decide to take on the
monster all by themselves. Well, sorry, but no goddamn way. We call in the authorities.
We get lots of people with lots of equipment—giant crucifixes, automatic weapons loaded
with silver bullets, all the garlic they can carry—and we blitz the whole town. Spotlights,
teams of at least six, and nobody ever, ever,
ever
goes off on their own—”

“Jace,” Charlie says gently. “This is a small town in the middle of nowhere. We’ve
got a sheriff and one part-time deputy. We might be able to rustle up some guns, but
we don’t have any silver bullets or the know-how to make them.”

“We’ll ask the Internet! It knows
everything
!”

Charlie sighs. “Okay, sure. But how long is that going to take? Where are we going
to get the equipment we’ll need? You have a metal foundry in your basement you’re
not telling me about?”

I’m starting to run out of steam. “No. But—”

“The only people that are going to believe you are the ones who already know the truth.
And they’ll be the first ones to call you crazy.”

Which everybody else will agree with. “Okay, but … we need
help,
Charlie. We’re way out of our league, here. This is a league we didn’t even know
existed
twenty-four hours ago, and now we’re supposed to compete at a professional level?
Let’s at least try to sign up a few more players!”

Charlie thinks about it. “Like who?”

“How about the sheriff? He already knows something weird is going on. Maybe if we
show him what we’ve found out so far—”

“I wouldn’t recommend that,” Cassiar says quietly.

“Why?” I demand.

“Because Sheriff Stoker is a high-ranking member of the Gallows cult. He is, in fact,
their second-in-command.”

*   *   *

It’s funny, how the mind works.

You can load it up with all kinds of contradictory information, and it’ll adapt. You
can overload it with sensory input, and it’ll adapt. You can deprive it of any input
at all, and it’ll adapt. It’s based in three pounds of jellylike flesh that’s mostly
water, and is capable of producing art, mathematics, language, and emotion.

But it has its limits.

I thought I was doing fine. Supernatural beings, my TV talking to me, evil cults out
for my blood … but somehow, the simple fact that Sheriff Stoker is one of the bad
guys just stops me dead. I got used to the idea of reality not being trustworthy a
while ago, but the notion that someone I respect—and yes, I do respect cops, believe
it or not—is a genuine Bad Guy just knocks the wind out of me. It hits me on a much
deeper level than a nasty revelation; it feels like a personal betrayal.

“I have to go,” I say. My voice sounds flat and unreal, like a bad recording. I’m
out of the room and halfway down the stairs before Charlie catches up with me. He
doesn’t try to stop me, just says, “Jace? Are you okay?”

“No,” I say. My voice sounds puzzled, but a little relieved, too. I don’t feel either
of those things. “I need to go home.”

“Okay, we can do that—”

“Alone, Charlie. I need to be alone.” That isn’t true, I
know
it isn’t true, but I can’t explain. Not even to Charlie. “Stay here, talk to Mr.
Cassiar. See if you can come up with a plan.”

“I don’t think you being alone is such a good idea right now—”

I’m already out the front door and down the porch steps. “Come by before it gets dark.
Zhang won’t do anything before then.”

“I … all right. Just be careful, okay?”

I nod, but don’t look back. I need to go home.

I need my shows.

*   *   *

I remember.

I remember the last time I felt this way. It was when I had my breakdown, when they
had to take me away in an ambulance and sedate me. That was the last time I felt this …
shattered.

My memories of the event have always been fragmented. Little bits of broken-glass
sharpness mixed into a thick, murky broth of amnesia, like a stew made of mirror shards
and tapioca. I remember the jab of the needle. I remember the way the blood spurted
when I broke the EMT’s nose. I remember being very, very concerned that nobody touch
the remote.

But I didn’t remember the breakdown itself. Not until right now.

Everything’s very far away. My thoughts are very loud, and I don’t have a lot of control
over them; they jump from subject to subject, memory and imagination blurring together,
making random connections. A small, quiet part of me is watching this happen, like
someone watching TV. That’s the part that’s in control of my body, making me walk
to my house, unlock the door, breeze past Galahad, and unearth my stash. Not the regular
one, under the fridge; my
secret
stash.

It consists of exactly one DVD in a paper envelope, and it’s duct-taped to the underside
of a bookshelf. It’s the one I watched over and over again, the one that convinced
me I was somebody else, the one I swore I’d never watch again.

It’s also the very first time the Sword of Midnight shows up, though nobody knows
who she is yet. I can’t believe I forgot that.

I slip the disc into the machine, turn on the TV. Galahad is watching me with a worried
look on his face, but I’m careful to keep the remote well away from him.

“You don’t understand,” I tell him. “This has … this has what I
need.
”

I sit down on the couch. The remote feels impossibly heavy in my hand, like a gun.
I find that strangely comforting.

I know why Cassiar’s calculation was off, why the Gallowsman is already here. It’s
because of my breakdown. That was the emotional torment that drew him to my little
town, and he’s been here ever since. Waiting. Getting stronger. Sucking down everyone’s
despair and bad luck and storing it for later, for whatever purpose his master had
in mind.

But his master is dead now. And I don’t know what will happen next.

I hit
PLAY
.

*   *   *

“Coming up on
CSI: Transylvania
this week:”

Forensic Investigator Helsing kneels beside a headless corpse in the moonlight. CSI
Larry Talbot stands behind him, hands in the pockets of his trenchcoat.

“Vic was decapitated with a silver-edged weapon,” Talbot says.

“Yes, he was,” Helsing murmurs. “But look at this—bite marks on the right breast,
with scorching around the edges. Pre-mortem, and probably made by silver.”

“Silver teeth? That would rule out a pire or a ’thrope.”

“You’d think so. But obviously,
someone
has fangs for the mammaries.…”

The opening bars of
The Who’s
“Behind Blue Eyes” swell, and then the scene cuts to the opening credits of
The Bloodhound Files
.

The world around me falls away. The colors on the monitor are richer, deeper than
real life. The theme music, so familiar, so haunting, makes my heart ache. I go up
and touch the warmth of the screen, willing the hardness of the glass to soften into
a membrane I can push through. Tears run down my face.

I want to be there. I want to go
home.

The Sword of Midnight is in the very first scene. She’s stalking Jace, who knows somebody’s
following her. The Sword is perched on the edge of a rooftop, looking down at her
quarry.

“Hello,” I whisper.

The Sword turns, slowly, to face me. She looks solemn. “So you’re finally watching
it. I didn’t think you were strong enough yet.”

“I don’t know if I am, either. But I have to
know.
”

“Yes, you do. So go ahead and ask me.”

I take a deep breath and let it out. “Who am I?”

“Your name is Jace Valchek. You used to be a criminal profiler for the FBI. You were
taken from your world and into another one, where magic exists and vampires, werewolves,
and golems make up ninety-nine percent of the population—”

“No,” I whisper. “That’s crazy. That’s Jace Red Dog’s story, not mine.”

“Jace Red Dog is just a character on a TV show. You’re not—you’re real, you’re
you.
She’s the imposter, okay? Life imitates art, especially when alternate realities
are involved. You
know
that.”

“Parallel worlds. Each one a little different than the next. Worlds with different
histories, different rules, right next to each other.”

“Yes. That’s it, exactly.”

“You’re not telling me everything.
That’s
what I am, right? Some kind of alternate version of the real Jace Valchek? Some kind
of, of
echo
?”

“No, Jace. There
are
alternate versions of you—though not as many as there used to be—but you’re the one
I just described. It’s the world around you that’s not the original.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

She sighs. “Your mind has been messed with, Jace. Your memories. You’re not from a
small town in Kansas, and you’re not crazy. You don’t belong where you are—in fact,
you’re probably being given some sort of medication to keep you from getting sick
as a result.”

I think about the Erthybon. About how I feel disconnected and nauseous if I miss a
dose. “So why am I here? How did I get here?”

“You were taken against your will, by a sorcerer. Jumping between parallel worlds
is extremely difficult, but he manages it with ease. He’s the one behind all this,
Jace. He’s been manipulating the situation from the very start.”

“I see. So I’m really a kick-ass crime fighter. I don’t really belong here. I’m being
victimized by an evil sorcerer, and the medication I’m taking is part of the plot.”
I laugh, a little wildly. “God, it all fits together perfectly, doesn’t it? Nothing’s
my fault, it’s all this big, evil
conspiracy.
I’m not a pathetic little nutcase trapped in a small town; I’m a
hero
! And all I have to do is believe, right? Or do I have to flap my fairy wings together,
too?”

“Jace. Look at me.”

I do. She reaches up and starts to undo the buckles that hold her mask in place. “You
don’t have to believe, Jace. You just have to
remember.
”

The mask falls away.

I have to admit, I was halfway expecting her face to be my own. But it’s not—it’s
a woman who looks familiar but I can’t quite place. She pulls a dark wig off, too,
revealing short, pixieish blonde hair. She studies me, then gives me an encouraging
smile. “Know who I am?”

“You look sort of … I don’t know. I’m not sure.”

“Try to remember. Take however much time you need. This link is better than the previous
ones, so I can keep my image on screen longer.”

I study her. Something comes back to me, but it’s blurry. After a second, I realize
why, and grin. “We got drunk together, didn’t we? Somewhere … somewhere with slot
machines.”