Back From the Undead (22 page)

I lower the gun and glance at the monk. His eyes are open a little wider, but that’s about the only sign of surprise. His eyebrows slowly lower as the expression on his face changes.

“That is…” He stops. I wait for it.

He tries again. “It is most…” He trails off.

It’s all I can do to not blurt out
Ludicrous? Absurd? Stupid?
and every other synonym for
ridiculous
I can think of, but I don’t want to influence him. I can tell the enchantment is doing that all on its own.

“Very interesting,” he says at last. “It is as you said.”

“I’m impressed. Most people get stuck in denial.”

“I am more aware than most people.”

Well, he’s got me there. “So you see my problem? The reaction you’re having is the same one
every person on Earth
has to my gun. It’s so powerful it’s even started to affect
me
. So who am I supposed to go to for help?”

He meets my eyes. “You,” he says softly, “are not
of
this Earth. Are you?”

“Well … technically, no. But I’m not a supernatural creature, either. I’m from a parallel world, an alternate Earth. That’s where my weapon came from, too.”

“And you cannot return?”

“No. If I could, I wouldn’t have to worry about ammo. Or a whole lot of other things.”

He nods. “This spell. It is not sorcery—it is
kamiwaza,
the work of the gods.”

“Well, great. That means Inari can help me out, right? This is on her level.”

“I am afraid she cannot. As sorcery is beneath her, this is surely above. She will not interfere in the affairs of other gods—not at the request of a mortal.”

“No, no—the spell wasn’t cast by a god. It’s this one guy. A shaman. A really powerful one, sure, but just a man—”

He cuts me off with a curt wave of his hand. “It matters not. Perhaps he is a god in mortal guise, or perhaps a god is working through him. Whatever the details, Inari will not involve herself, of this you can be sure.”

I sigh and holster the Ruger. “Chain of command, right? Don’t bother the brass with the problems of the troops. Thanks anyway.”

I’m halfway down the alley when he calls out, “Wait.”

I turn back. The monk motions me to return, and I do.

“Inari cannot help you,” he says, his voice low, “but perhaps another can.”

“Who?”

“As one shaman has caused your problems, would it not seem wise to call upon another to solve them?”

“I’ve been down that road. The spell screws with everyone’s perceptions, shamans included. You can’t fight a problem if your brain keeps insisting there isn’t one.”

“You most assuredly can, Agent Valchek. One can learn to fight anything—even the wind—with the right teacher. I know such a person. Should they agree to help you, this enchantment would simply be another opponent for them to face.”

“And you think they could beat it?”

“They have never known defeat. It is more a question of whether or not they could be convinced that the challenge was worthy of their time.”

Sounds like the monk is talking about some kind of martial artist shaman—which is a pretty good description of some Shinto priests I’ve met. Well, why not? Maybe it’s possible to just pound a spell into submission. “So who is this person? How do I get in touch with them?”

The monk shakes his head. “You do not. They guard their privacy jealously. But I know of a place they can be found, at certain times; should you go there, they might be willing to speak to you. I will attempt to contact them in advance, to let them know of you and your quest. If they are agreeable, they will approach you and let you know.”

“And if they aren’t?”

“Then you will never see them.”

I shrug. What do I have to lose? “Okay—where and when?”

He tells me. I do my best not to wince. He cautions me to come alone, and I assure him I will. Then he turns and goes inside the temple, and I walk back the way I came.

I’m a block away from my hotel before I abruptly realize I never told him my name.

But he knew it anyway.

FOURTEEN

Apparently, the favorite spot for this mysterious kick-ass shaman to hang out in is a graveyard. At three in the morning.

I’m sitting on a gravestone, kicking my heels against the polished granite and wondering if I’m even in the right area. The monk told me to come here but didn’t specify any particular plot or mausoleum, and this place is huge. It’s illuminated by a moon a little past half full, and the gently rolling terrain seems to go on forever. I’ve been passing the time by reading tombstones, trying to decipher if the grave holds a thrope, a human, or a pire.

MISSED AND CHERISHED BY HIS PACK.
Definitely a thrope.

BELOVED CHILD OF THE MOON.
Ditto.

TAKEN FROM US TOO SOON.
Could be either, but the dates are an undead giveaway—thropes don’t live for six hundred years. “Too soon?” I mutter. His relatives have either a black sense of humor or an overwhelming one of entitlement. I’m also surprised they even bothered with a plot—after six centuries, there couldn’t have been much left of a pire but dust. Maybe they buried him in a vacuum cleaner bag instead of a coffin.

TOO GOOD FOR THE HORRORS OF THIS WORLD.

That one stops me. A woman named Caroline Meyer, only thirty-seven when she did the Last Tango. Human, almost certainly, and a little too close to my own age for comfort. I decide to take a little break from my reading and pay more attention to my surroundings.

Which are still as deserted as they were before. I can hear traffic in the background, though—there’s a major street that runs along one border, just out of sight on the other side of a hill—but other than that it’s … well, dead.

But not spooky, weirdly enough. In a world full of vampires, werewolves, and golems, a graveyard seems sort of mundane—like a campground, or a Motel 6. If something were to suddenly stagger from one of the tombs, my first thought would be,
What, the poor guy can’t afford a place with central heating?

But that doesn’t happen. I’m starting to think I don’t meet whatever standards this super-shaman has for taking on a challenge, or maybe that he—or she—just isn’t interested in helping out a human being from a neighboring dimension.

I wonder again about the monk knowing my name. Did it mean something, or was it just some sort of minor magic trick guys like him use to seem impressive and all-knowing? Was the monk more than he appeared to be, or just a show-off?

The terms
monk
and
show-off
didn’t really go together. And identifying me wasn’t really a minor trick, either; knowing someone’s name was a big deal in magic, even I recognize that. So what—

“Urrm,” someone says beside me.

I snap my head around. There, one grave over, perched on a headstone much like I’m perched on mine, is a skeleton.

A rather strange-looking skeleton, actually. It seems a little lopsided somehow, like maybe it was taken apart by one person and put back together by a passing group of drunken stuntmen with a grudge against osteopaths. Its bones are different sizes and in different stages of decay: Some are a bright, polished white, while others are chipped and yellowing. Its eyeballs sit in their sockets like marbles guarding the entrance to two little caves. It cocks its head at me and grins in a completely involuntary way.

“Hallo,” it says. It has a very strange accent, like a Swede doing a bad impression of a Russian.

“Uh—hello.”

“I think that maybe perhaps you are waiting for me, yes?”

You’ve got to be kidding …
“Uh, no, no. I’m just waiting for a bus. Do you know if the Number Eight runs past midnight?”

“Hah! You are making with the jokes, now! That is humorous and also being funny!” It points at me with a hand missing two of its fingers. There’s something strange about its head that I can’t quite put my finger on.

“Yeah, yeah, okay. The monk sent you, right?”

“Indeed! You are needing my help, is that not correct?”

I sigh. “I guess … wait. Are you just here to take me to someone else?”

“You mean like a guide, what with all the leading and pointing you in the right directions?”

“That’s what I was getting at.”

“And maybe even taking you someplace and not showing you how to be getting lost?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh. Then, no.” It indicates itself with a bony thumb. “Myself am the one, baby! I and me alone, with the else of nobody!”

“Oooookay … and what, exactly,
are
you?”

Who knew it was possible for a fleshless skull to look hurt? “Whaaaaat? How can you be not knowing of the glory of my being who I am? I am
Gashadokuro
.”

“Right. What the hell’s a Gashadokuro?”

“It is being a fearsome creature made of the bones.
Special
bones, only.”

I nod. “Uh-huh. What kind of bones, the ones that didn’t pass quality control? Bones you found at yard sales? Cheap off-brand bones made in Taiwanese sweatshops?”

He doesn’t have eyelids, but I swear he blinks. “No. Is made from people who have died from the not eating.”

I lean a little closer and squint. “Sure. Except they aren’t all even
bones,
are they? That’s the handle of a tennis racket in your thigh.”

“What? No, is just deformed. From the nastiness of the starving to death.”

“And your skull. It’s made out of plastic.”

“That is most scurrilous lie!”

“I can see the seam from the mold. And a little embossed merchandising symbol.”

His shoulders droop. He heaves a sigh. “Is true. Is not easy finding bones of people who starve until they dead. Not now. Why can’t Gashadokuro use bones of people with bad hygiene? Or bones of people who talk in movies? Then I could be being mighty fearsome, you bet. Instead, me is being stuck with anorexics and people who get lost in woods.”

Probably not a lot of those, either, in a world full of pires and thropes—and lems don’t even
have
bones. I feel obscurely sorry for the guy. “That sucks, it really does. But, uh … what about me?”

He perks up. “Are you planning on the starving and the dying?”

“What? No. I meant my problem—”

“Too bad. I am thinking you could be losing some of the weight.”

“Excuse me?”

“Fasting! Is great idea! Easy, too—just to be
not eating
. Anyone can be doing, even fat cow like you!”

I can’t believe I came out to a deserted graveyard at three in the morning in order to be insulted by a thrift-store skeleton. “Look, bonehead, I’m not fat. Not that you’re much of a judge, anyway—to you,
everybody
must look overweight, right?”

He sighs, a long, reedy wheeze. “Is true. Fleshy, fleshy people, everywhere. I am thinking you are all disgusting, if truth being told. But that is being Gashadokuro’s problem, not yours. Your problem very different, yes?”

“Yes. I need—”

He holds up a finger bone. “I am knowing already. You are needing Gashadokuro’s specialty in one area of the particular.”

He hops off his gravestone. One of his ribs is loose and clatters against another when he moves. “Not to be worrying. I will be helping, in most glorious and spectacular fashion!”

“Terrific. So you can tell me how to beat this spell and make more bullets?”

He glances at me with eyes that roll around like ball bearings in a shot glass. “What? No. I am to be biting your head off.”

“You’re going to
what
now?”

He shrugs apologetically. “Bite your head off—it’s what Gashadokuro does. Aren’t you knowing
anything
?”

I jump down off my own gravestone and take a step backward. “Hold on there, funnybones. First of all, I thought you were here to
help
me. And second—no offense, but you’re not exactly terrifying.”

“Oh, two-part question. Gashadokuro hates those, but will be doing his best to answer. First part, with the helping? Yes, absolutely, but please to replace
help
with
bite
. Is easy.”

He takes a step toward me. His posture straightens from a partial crouch to something more upright, making him seem taller. “Second part. This part is better
showing
than
telling,
I am most sure…”

He’s definitely taller than I first thought. At least six foot two, maybe three …

Four. Six.
Ten
.

I scramble backward as he takes another lengthening step forward. Seven feet. Nine. Twelve. The truncated tennis racket replacing one of his thigh bones is now the size of an ax handle. He stares down at me with eyes the size of glassy baseballs—and he’s still getting bigger.

“You see, Jace Valchek? Is all being a matter of proportion. Even tiniest mouse is being fearsome when size of lion, am I not honestly true?”

His voice is getting bigger, too, booming through the quiet of the graveyard like a drunk in a library.

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” I say. “No need to get all shouty.”

I draw my scythes. A single smooth, cross-handed action, practiced hundreds of times, from two specially designed holsters sewn into the lining of my jacket. Eighteen inches of solid ironwood in each hand, tipped with a steel cone sheathed in silver. Good for taking down pires, thropes, or even lems.

Giant talking skeletons, I’m not so sure.

I lunge forward. His knee is about level with my chest now. I smash his patella with a hard, right-handed swing, fragmenting his kneecap into dozens of yellowing shards. In a human opponent, that would be a crippling, agonizing wound; the effect it has on Boney G is to make his lower leg fall off.

He doesn’t fall down, though, just shifts his weight to his other leg and balances on that. He puts his hands on his hips and glares down at me indignantly from a height of at least twenty feet.

“What did you be doing that for?” he demands. “Now I’m needing new knee!”

“Maybe you can get a deal on a pair,” I say, and go for the other one—but he’s ready for me this time. He kicks me with his stump, the end of the femur slamming into my chest and tossing me backward. I smack into a crypt, taking a hard shot to my skull and making the world go a little wobbly. I shake my head, trying to clear it, as an irate, Jurassic Park–size Halloween novelty takes an experimental hop toward me.