Back From the Undead (34 page)

“Trading’s exactly what I had in mind. You let me sit in on the negotiations, I’ll give you the gunpowder formula. I can even give you the name of a jeweler in Chinatown who might be able to crank out a few bullets before the big summit.”

I stare at him. Hard. There are about a dozen different ways he could screw this up for me … but the worst he could manage in this situation is to ruin the negotiations, and I can’t think of any reason he’d want to. The last time he tried to sic an Elder God on civilization he was, by his own admission, not in his right mind; at the moment he seems eminently sane.

But I just can’t risk it.

“I can’t,” I say. “There’s too much at stake. I’m sorry.”

He shrugs. “About what I figured—but I had to try. Give my best to Charlie, will you?”

He reaches past me and opens the door. He’s close enough that I can smell the leather of his jacket. “Wait. What are you going to do?”

“Me? Nothing. This one’s down to you, slugger. Give ’em hell—no, wait, they already have that. Good luck, anyway—we’ll talk more afterward.”

I hesitate, then stand aside. He steps out, slipping on a pair of sunglasses at the same time, then ducks through the door to the changing area.

I follow, but he’s already gone. I find Charlie sitting patiently on a couch thoughtfully provided by the store for suffering husbands and boyfriends; Stoker would have had to walk right past him.

“Well?” I say.

“Well what? That’s the same outfit you were wearing when you went in.”

I shake my head and sigh. Stoker has many skills, and selective invisibility seems to be one of them. “Never mind,” I say. “Come on, we’ve got an errand to run.”

“Where to?”

“Chinatown. I need to hit a few jewelers’ shops.”

*   *   *

I get the call six hours later.

“Hello, Jace,” Zevon says when I answer. “I’ve arranged that little get-together you suggested.”

“Where and when?”

“Uh-uh—not so fast. Rules and preconditions first.”

“Go ahead.”

“You won’t, of course, being talking to Yog-Sothoth directly, though you will have the next best thing. You’ll be dealing with one of his incarnations, a charming fellow known as Tawil At-U’mr. Inari herself has elected to be present, so I guess you caught her in a favorable mood.

“Tawil is to be addressed as the Most Ancient and Prolonged of Life. Inari is to be addressed as Inari Okami or Most Revered. You can refer to yourself any way you want.

“The meeting will take place at this address.” I grab a pen and jot it down. “That’s in the financial district. Conference room on the twenty-third floor, three o’clock sharp.”

“What, not in a graveyard at midnight?”

Zevon sighs. “This is the big leagues, sweetheart; they can make
any
place scary. You can bring whoever you want, but they’ll have to wait outside. Talks will be among you three and that’s it.”

“Anything else?”

“Be polite. Try not to stare. Make sure your will is up-to-date.” He hangs up.

I bring Charlie and Eisfanger with me. Charlie’s put on a new suit for the occasion, a purple so dark it’s almost black, with little flecks of gray woven into the fabric. Black tie with a little silver sword tie pin. Gray suede shoes and fedora to match, with a thin black hatband.

“Pretty sharp,” I say.

“You think?”

“You’re making my eyeballs bleed just looking at you.” I myself am wearing a very business-like black skirt and blazer over a white silk blouse. Low-heeled pumps, good for running in. No gun, no scythes—you don’t go armed when you’re trying to inspire trust, and against beings this powerful it would be pointless, anyway.

Eisfanger’s in navy-blue pants, brown loafers, a clip-on tie, and a white shirt; it appears he forgot to wear anti-perspirant today. Or maybe he did, and it just can’t handle the load.

“You okay?” I ask him.

“Yeah. Sure. No problem.”

“Take it easy. It’s just a meeting, not the Apocalypse.”

“Uh-huh. Right. No problem.”

“Eisfanger, you won’t even be in the room. You and Charlie are getting parked outside, remember? The only thing you have to do is sit down.”

“I know. But—you’re going to be diplomatic, right? Because these are
gods
.”

“Diplomacy is kind of the point.”

“And don’t sneeze. That could be seen as a sign of disrespect. That’s all it takes, you know—gods can be very touchy. One little sneeze, and you know what happens next?
They
sneeze. But when a god sneezes, the effects are
very
different. One
Achoo!
from them and you’re a used Kleenex in the waste basket of the cosmos.”

“You have no idea how glad I am I have a trained shaman to explain these things to me.”

He looks at me with pleading in his eyes. “Just—try not to be
you
for a while, okay?”

“Hey! I’m a little insulted, here.”

“Sorry. Sorry.”

I clap him on the shoulder. “It’ll be fine, Damon. Or, you know, it won’t. In which case I’m sure you’ll be close enough to the epicenter that your death will be quick and painless.”

Charlie drives. We don’t talk much on the way there; I’m focusing on what I’m going to say, Charlie knows better than to interrupt my concentration, and Eisfanger’s too overwhelmed to do anything but stare out the window and fret quietly to himself.

We park in an underground lot that looks a lot like Hemo’s. We ride up in an elevator that’s all brass fixtures and walnut paneling. We get out on the twenty-third floor, which is dedicated solely to the offices of a firm called Interfutures Trading. The receptionist is a brisk young thrope with an expensive haircut who checks his computer and directs us down a hall.

The place is decorated in the sort of bland corporate chic that suggests people with a lot of money who are too busy to worry about style: spot lighting, a few tasteful pieces of sculpture, a painting or two. Darkly polished hardwood flooring, large, heavy doors with brass handles set into walls painted an eggshell white.

There’s a little waiting area just outside the conference room, with a few comfortable chairs, a low-slung glass table, and a nook with a coffeemaker. I pause outside the door. “Wish me luck,” I say.

Eisfanger says, “Good luck, good luck.” Charlie just gives me a nod and tugs on the brim of his hat.

I open the door and walk in.

I’m not fond of giving presentations, but I’ve done my share; working for the FBI, you get used to it. It’s all about conveying information in the clearest way, minimizing problems and maximizing solutions. I know that sounds like mindless business jargon, but it’s just shorthand for trying to figure out a plan without getting in one another’s way. Even when everyone in the room has a different agenda, there’s almost always some kind of common ground to stand on.

The ground I’m currently standing on is rocky, windswept, and uneven. It’s shaped roughly like an oval the size of a two-car garage, and there’s a large conference table of highly polished mahogany standing in the center of it.

Beyond the edges of the oval, there’s nothing but black, empty space. Above and all around unfamiliar constellations glimmer, billions of miles away. I glance behind me and see that the door is still there, which is somewhat comforting. I resist the urge to step back through it, and close it instead.

There are two beings here with me, one at either end of the table. They’re both standing; there are no chairs.

The one to my right must be Inari. My research tells me she can appear in many different forms—male, female, young, old, even in groups of three or five—but the one she’s chosen today is that of a young Japanese woman. She’s dressed in a flowing kimono of vermillion, her hair pinned back. She has a sickle in one hand, and a coiled whip hangs at her hip.

The other is just a man-shaped silhouette that looks like it’s made of rippling, multicolored silk with lights behind it. No, more like a hundred flickering candles seen through a veil. Or maybe the aurora borealis trying to mate with a rainbow and a sunset at the same time …

I wrench my gaze away with an effort. Right. Don’t look at Tawil At-U’mr for too long. “Hello,” I say. I approach the table and stop, very carefully, at precisely the halfway point between the two. “I’m Jace Valchek.”

There’s a pause, and then Inari speaks first. “Welcome, Jace.” Her voice is rich and soft at the same time. “I am here at your behest. Speak your mind, please.”

“Thank you. I’m here because of an arrangement between Yog-Sothoth and a vampire named Isamu.”

A voice issues forth from the humanoid kaleidoscope.
“The dealings of the gods are not your affair.”

When I answer, I try to keep my eyes fixed on a spot just to his left. “Respectfully, Most Ancient and Prolonged of Life, this is not just about gods. If it were, believe me, I wouldn’t dream of interfering. But there are innocent children involved, children taken and used against their will. That
is
my affair.”

“Yog-Sothoth knows all and sees all. These are not your children. This is not your country. You have no reason to involve yourself.”

“He is correct,” Inari says. “How do you justify this?”

Oh, great. I’ve barely started and already I’ve got my own advocate ready to switch sides. “I don’t,” I say. “I’m not here to argue who is right and who is wrong. I’m more interested in practical matters—matters I believe Yog-Sothoth will also be keenly interested in.”

“Your beliefs mean nothing. Yog-Sothoth does not care what lesser beings believe or feel. Yog-Sothoth dwells in eternity, where such things are meaningless.”

“I misspoke. I
know
Yog-Sothoth will want to hear my proposal.”

Tawil pauses.
“Proceed.”

I’ve got his attention. Now let’s see if I can get his interest, too.

“First let me tell you what
I
want.
Destruction
.” Always lead with a hook—and from what I’ve seen, if there’s one thing that tends to whet an Elder God’s appetite it’s the possibility of some large-scale carnage. “I want Isamu’s shiny new Happy Place, sometimes known as Hereafter Two-Point-Oh, demolished. Crushed, smashed, turned into cosmic smithereens. I want it
gone,
and all the souls it holds back where they belong.”

Tawil doesn’t mess around with the whole that’s-a-tall-order-ma’am-I’ll-have-to-take-it-up-with-management bullshit. For him, this is business-as-usual god stuff.
“What do you offer in return?”

Here goes—time to lay my cards down and see if they’re worth as much as I think they are. “The one and only thing Yog-Sothoth is really interested in: new information.”

“Impossible. Yog-Sothoth sees all and knows all.”

“Yeah. No offense, but—that’s not strictly true, is it?”

I hold my breath and wait for the cosmic thunderbolt to turn me into a little wisp of black smoke.

“Truth is irrelevant. Knowledge is all. Yog-Sothoth knows and sees throughout all space and time; this shall not be disputed.”

“Because it isn’t true? So what, if truth is irrelevant?”

The silhouette’s shifting glow gets brighter. I think I’ve just pissed him off …

“Hold!” Inari says. Her whip is in her hand, and it seems to be on fire. “This woman is here under my protection. You will
not
destroy her on a whim.”

There’s a long, tense moment of silence. The little voice inside my head is saying,
Well, as long as it’s not on a
whim …

Finally, the glow subsides back to what it was. When Tawil speaks, there’s no anger in his voice.
“Proceed.”

“Let’s say—hypothetically—that Yog-Sothoth’s reach isn’t quite as all-reaching as he claims. Let’s say that ‘all time and space,’ while technically accurate, refers to one specific universe. The
whole
universe, don’t get me wrong … but both he and I know there’s more than one out there.”

I pause, waiting for a reaction. There isn’t one from Tawil, or at least one I can read. Inari’s smile seems a little wider, though.

“So let’s say someone from one of those other universes visits this one. That person would bring a little bit of that place with her, encoded into the very essence of her being—her spiritual DNA, so to speak. Her experiences, her knowledge—every little thing she’d ever done or come into contact with in her own universe would have left psychic traces of its existence on her and in her.
And none of it would be known to Yog-Sothoth.
”

I can’t look at Tawil, so I look at Inari instead. She gives me a barely perceptible nod to go with her smile, and I start to think I might actually get away with this.

The key to catching subjects using a criminal profile always boils down to one simple factor: What do they
need
? Killer or rapist, arsonist or thief, at the root of all serial offenders is a deep-seated compulsion to act the way they do. Often it’s an outlet for rage or frustration, sometimes it’s a sexual psychosis, occasionally it even comes down to boredom—but there’s always some void that needs to be filled. Figuring out what that void is and how the subjects try to fill it will inevitably lead you to a place where they’re vulnerable. I call it the lion-at-the-watering-hole approach … but the lion in this metaphor isn’t the perp.

It’s me.

“Proof of this offering would be required,”
Tawil intones.

I untie the cloth charm around my wrist that Eisfanger made for me. “Sure. Here’s a taste.” I toss it at the silhouette, where it promptly vanishes like I just threw it down a well. A little disrespectful, maybe, but I’m not getting anywhere near Tawil himself. He might just decide to swallow me the same way and save himself the trouble, Inari or not.

I wait. I honestly don’t know if this will work. Cross-universe communication is difficult, but the NSA managed it; if Isamu has shamans on his payroll with access to HPLC, I might even be offering Yogi something he already has. I still don’t know exactly what the Yakuza offered him in the first place, other than the chance to move from the cosmic IT department to management.