Bone Song (32 page)

Laura activated the talisman's spell, and an inverted cone of silence rippled through the air as it slid into place, enclosing Judge Prior and Laura in a volume from which no sound could escape.

A
transparent
volume.

Watching carefully, Alexa held herself very still, hoping that both Laura and the judge would forget about her presence. She watched for perhaps two minutes.

Finally, the privacy field shriveled out of existence and Laura put the talismanic device back into her purse. She twisted the clasp shut. Then she waited as, hand shaking, Judge Prior undid the cap of his expensive fountain pen and slowly signed his name at the foot of the warrant.

“There,” he said. “You're satisfied now.”

“I am. Thank you, sir.” Laura picked up the warrant. “We'll see ourselves out.”

The judge watched Laura and Alexa until they reached the study door. Then: “You've changed, Laura Steele. You didn't use to be like this.”

“Yeah,” said Laura. “Death has a way of doing that.”

Outside, the Vixen's headlights sprang into full brightness as Laura and Alexa came down the steps. Neither woman said anything until they had climbed into the car and it was rolling down the driveway.

When they were on the public road, Alexa sighed.

“I don't believe that.”

“We got the document,” said Laura. “What else matters? I hope your lip-reading is as good as ever.”

“Just about. Did your father really tell you that he'd bribed a judge? And Old Incorruptible Prior, at that?”

“Not exactly. Dad said it all right, just not to me. I was listening at the keyhole.”

“Oh.”

As the car drove on past the park—it looked dark and dangerous in the night—Alexa added, “What did you mean earlier, about being willing to sacrifice? The judge?”

“No. I'm the one who's made an enemy tonight.”

“Shit.”

“Do I look like someone who cares?”

Don Mentrassore, his nose covered in a green wormskin dressing and his manner furious—though not at Donal—did more than furnish the information. With Hix (not Rix) driving, the don accompanied Donal to the Power Center, where they bypassed the generation halls with their enslaved children.

Donal wondered whether he was right to be pursuing one man in the midst of this, before remembering the diva and what had happened to himself.

Uniformed technicians handed over a rolled-up purpleprint and a large flashlight.

“There're bogies,” said one of the men, “that can take you most of the way.”

Still dressed in his theater finery, the don nodded to Donal and said, “That's a little too adventurous for a man of my age. But I wish you luck, sir.”

“Yes, thanks.” Donal nodded, unable to warm to the man any more than that. He waved the purpleprint. “Appreciated.”

It was now around five hours since the don's driver had tried to kill Donal in this place. Perhaps later he would be able to blame Harald for that attempt, not the don.

“This way.”

Two technicians led him through a hatchway and down a metal ladder, to a narrow maintenance tunnel along which a single rail ran. There was a bogie as promised, a small flatbed atop two wheels side by side. Donal could not see how it stayed upright or how it was powered.

“Necromagnetic induction,” one of the techs said. “And, look, see up there?”

Donal looked. There was a glowing number in orange, 327, high up beside the hatchway.

“You keep on going,” the tech continued, “until you reach two hundred one, then get off and ascend the ladder, where the domicile tunnels—that's the tunnels to private homes—radiate outward. Ya gotta take number five, and it's the second house.”

“All right,” said Donal. “Two hundred one, five, second house.”

“And you'll want these.” The technician handed over heavy goggles. “It goes pretty fast.”

Donal pulled the goggles over his head, clambered onto the bogie, then sat cross-legged on the flatbed, thinking again of the cross-legged, mindless children sitting in rows not so far from here.

“What do I—”

A rectangular portion of the bed, next to Donal's right hand, began glowing a soft orange.

“Press that, keep pressing it . . .”

Donal pressed down and the bogie rolled into motion.

“. . . and keep pressing until you want to stop, then just let go.”

No one had to tell Donal that this was called a deadman switch.

Acceleration was building up, but something prevented him from falling off.

Good ride for kids.

If only the orphanage could see him now, ignoring the plight of hundreds, no, thousands of children. If Sister Mary-Anne Styx were here . . .

But already the tunnel had arced to the left and downward, and if Donal looked back there was no sign of the Power Center, only the plain walls and rows of safety lights streaming past.

I
am
the music.

With his left hand, he checked the gun at the small of his back once more.

In Tristopolis, Viktor was leading a group of R-H detectives up the short path to Commissioner Vilnar's blackstone residence. It was unfair of Laura, by Viktor's reckoning, to expect Robbery-Haunting to help out in the slightest way—forcing your way into a police commissioner's house didn't seem like the best method of enhancing anyone's career prospects.

At least, Viktor decided, he himself would do all the talking. Warrant in hand, he banged on the door. In maybe five seconds, it swung open. A scowling woman with a lined face stared at Viktor.

“What the bleeding Thanatos do you want at this hour?”

Viktor held up the warrant.

“Is the commissioner in, ma'am?”

“No, he's not. He went to the Death-damned office for something. You married, detective?”

“Uh, no, ma'am. Not exactly.”

“Well, do some poor woman a favor and think about whether she wants to be married to the entire damned department. And was that a search warrant I just read?”

“Yes, that's—”

“I don't know what's going on, but Arrhennius is going to be pretty pissed at you guys. You want some coffee?”

“Arrhennius?”

“You're busting into a man's home and you don't even know his first name?”

Viktor rubbed his face.

“Sorry, ma'am.”

“No, you're not. But I suspect you will be.”

At exactly the same moment, Laura and Alexa were leading another team of R-H officers, six of them, toward the elevator shafts. Gertie's wraith hand beckoned briefly before slipping back inside the entrance to her own.

The eight women and men looked at one another before stepping into the shafts in tandem. No information indicators showed on any of the elevator shafts.

They rose in silence and came out on the 187th floor, into a corridor ringed with alternating bands of icy cold and searing heat. Laura said nothing as they passed through the outer office.

Eyes was at her desk as always, her long black hair glistening with reflected highlights from the silver cables that linked her eye sockets, via the console, to the rooftop mirrors—to what was in effect the commissioner's private communication and surveillance network above the city streets.

Perhaps Eyes somehow knew about the warrant that Laura carried, because Alexa noticed her reach beneath her desk to press a button. The door to the inner offices slid open.

Then Alexa was following Laura into the commissioner's office, with the R-H officers behind them.

“What's gone wrong?” This was the commissioner himself, gesturing back the metal visitor's chair that was transforming itself into a hooked, talon-bristling monstrosity, ready to attack. “What is this?”

There were other defenses in here, many of them subtle and unexpected, down to the ashtray that could double as a percussion grenade.

“It's the Black Circle,” said Laura, holding out the warrant so that the commissioner would be unable to see his own name written there. “They've penetrated higher in the city apparatus than anyone suspected.”

“And you've got proof?” said the commissioner.

“Enough, we think.”

“Are you sure about that?” The commissioner's fists clenched. “Really sure?”

“Certain enough,” said Laura, “to get a judge's signature on this.”

The commissioner's squarish face split in a predatory smile.

“Then let's go and get her,” he said. “I've waited a long time for this.”

Laura froze, still holding out the warrant.

“What did you say?”

“I said—Well, what the Thanatos did you think I said? Are you deaf?”

“No, but—”

A crash reverberated through the office, a vibration that rippled the air—or perhaps just the eyeballs of everyone inside. They toppled to the floor and lay there. The warrant spilled across the floor, right next to the commissioner's blunt-fingered hand. He levered himself up to a seated position on the floor, staring at the paper.

Then he looked up at Laura.

“You bloody fool,” he said.

After a long moment, Laura regained her voice.

“Sir?” Her certainty had slipped. “We have evidence from corroborated sources. We know the phone number you used to contact the . . .”

Laura's voice trailed off.

“What number?”

Alexa answered: “It was seven-seven-seven, two-nine, three-five-one, seven-two-zero. There's no doubt.”

The commissioner huffed as he struggled to his feet.

“Which'll be the phone on Marnie's desk.”

There was no doorway. The R-H officers had already crawled to the wall where the door had been. Two of them slipped deep into trances, trying to determine what hex enchantment had been wrought. One of their colleagues hammered his fist in frustration on the solid stonework.

“Who?” said Laura.

“Marnie, my secretary.”

“Oh, you mean Eyes,” said Alexa.

The commissioner's lips twitched.

“Yes, I mean Marnie Finross, the alderman's niece, whom I thought I was keeping under adequate surveillance, until you blew the whole thing wide open.”

Laura tried to focus on what was happening. Commissioner Vilnar was tough but slippery when it came to confrontations: everyone knew that.

“Nice try, Commissioner. But hasty lies won't cover up the evidence.”

“No, but impetuous actions will certainly mean Marnie gets away, don't you think?”

Laura opened her mouth to reply, but one of the R-H officers said, “He's telling the truth, ma'am.”

“And you are . . .”

“Petra Halsted. They said I should help out.”

“Laura, I've heard of her.” Alexa's tone was quiet. “She's a truthsayer. Notified before federal spellbinders.”

“Shit.”

The commissioner cleared his throat.

“Recrimination is for idiots,” he said. “Why don't we see if we can get ourselves out of this Death-damned mess?”

Donal had his gun out now, walking crouched along the narrow access tunnel. Back in the main tunnel, the wraith-enabled bogie had moved away from Donal as soon as he'd stepped off. There was no means of fast escape.

As far as he could tell, all the narrow branching tunnels led to the subterranean levels of the great houses; none led directly to the open ground. That would have been a security risk.

He came to the next door and stopped. Its necromagnetic lock looked huge, and Donal realized that he had not thought the problem through adequately.

Then power coils hummed and heavy bolts slammed back.

The door swung open.

“Shit.”

Two huge men with zombie-pale faces raised their submachine guns—Grauser Howlers with disk-shaped magazines—straight at the center of Donal's body. One twitch of a finger and a stuttering burst of fire would rip Donal in two, the bloody halves would fall with a wet thump to the floor, and that would be that.

D
isaster whirled in upon Donal,
tumbling on all sides as he admitted the depths of his stupidity. Without the chaos he'd intended to cause, there would be no reason for Temesin's officers—even assuming they were outside Gelbthorne's mansion—to break inside under the pretext of rescuing the councillor.

Laura. I'm sorry.

Sorry that he'd let her down. That he would never see her again.

Thanatos.

And then the strangest thing happened, the likes of which Donal had never seen during a police operation.

Both zombie guards lowered their weapons, stared at each other, and shook their heads. Then they turned to Donal and one of them said, “You have the touch of black blood. It is upon you.”

“Er . . .”

“This house,” said the other, “is a place of turbulence and mischief.”

“Say what?” Donal felt he should not be arguing, but what exactly was going on?

The first zombie handed his weapon to his colleague, then pulled open his own shirt and pressed his fingertips against his white chest in an exact sequence. There was a wet, soft ripping sound, and Donal could not turn his gaze away as the man's chest split open.

Inside, black and glistening, was the zombie's rhythmically pumping heart. The zombie placed his fingertips against its pulsing surface and said, “I will not harm you, brother.”

The zombie's colleague placed his Grauser Howler on the floor, then straightened up and likewise touched the other's beating black heart.

“I, too, swear that this human shall be my brother.”

The zombies looked at Donal.

“Um, thanks. I mean . . . thank you.”

“That is good enough.”

The zombie pulled his chest together, and the wound—or access orifice, or whatever—sealed up immediately. The zombie buttoned his shirt back up.

“We've just resigned from Councillor Gelbthorne's employ,” the other zombie guard told Donal. “By our actions, we've resigned. We have never liked this place.”

“Gelbthorne,” said the other, “disturbs the darkness.”

Donal still could not process what was happening.

“My name is Brial,” said the first zombie, “and this is Sinvex.”

“I'm . . . pleased to meet you,” said Donal.

Then both zombies turned away and walked off along a featureless passageway. Donal stared after them, bemused, wondering what the Thanatos had happened here.

A submachine gun still lay at his feet.

“Hey, you forgot something.”

But the zombies were already gone.

“Waste not, want not.”

Donal picked up the submachine gun, checked its magazine and action—full and perfect—and grinned, remembering the time he'd come in second in the battalion shooting competition in the machine-gun category. He'd always thought it was an accident: he was hopeless with this kind of weapon.

Perhaps this time he could come in first.

It was Gertie who rescued them, her wraith form slipping through the walls to check their condition, then accessing the trip switch contained beneath Eyes's desk. Beneath Marnie Finross's desk: Laura was still angry with herself for having missed the obvious.

The big door reappeared.

Wraith-enabled furniture scampered out of the office. The living metal chair exited first, followed by a cloud of assorted items surrounding the big lumbering desk on its stubby legs. Finally the humans, when they were sure it was clear, hurried out after the furniture.

Behind them, the portal to the commissioner's office sealed up once more.

*Sorry, Arrhennius.*

“What for?” said Commissioner Vilnar.

*I think your office is lost forever.*

The commissioner smiled.

“I can always get another one.”

Laura blinked. The commissioner was on first-name terms with an elevator wraith? Perhaps she had misjudged the man.

“Commander Steele,” the commissioner said. “What are you waiting for?”

“Um. . . Sir?”

“I want you to arrest Marnie right now.” He gestured at her empty desk. “Find her and bring her in.”

“Yes, sir.”

Laura left the room fast, followed by Alexa. The R-H officers exchanged glances, then nodded to the commissioner and exited.

The commissioner reached inside his jacket and pulled out a big blue-steel handgun, checked the safety, and reholstered. Then he went to the coat stand, got down his heavy overcoat, and pulled it on. As he did so, he noticed a discarded tissue in Marnie's wastepaper bin, stained with lipstick. He picked up the tissue and pushed it into his overcoat pocket.

“Gertie?”

*Yes, Arrhennius?*

“Can you drop me down to street level the quick way? Just like the old days?”

*My pleasure.*

“Then let's do it.”

A strange presence was prowling the lower corridors of Councillor Gelbthorne's mansion. Pulsing waves of coldness passed through the air.

Maids and other personnel were scurrying along the corridors, hurrying into offices or hidey-holes and locking the doors, as Donal passed amid the chaos. Donal saw two hulking gray-skinned men, with mosaic armor woven into their skin, who were squeezing their bulk into a linen cupboard, glancing down the corridor.

Whatever had been set loose in here, Donal didn't want to see it.

Donal took a short flight of steps up to an open red-brick landing. It was a vast atrium of white walls and red tiles and fifteen or more balconies arranged at odd angles. Donal caught a glimpse of dark scales, and then he was moving again, racing up steps as silently as he could manage.

More staff bolted out of his way as he hurtled toward double glass doors. Then he saw a tiny red button that reminded him of the fire alarm in the theater, so he did the natural thing: he hammered the thing with his fist.

Nothing happened.

“Shit shit shit.”

It had to be a fire alarm. What he hadn't figured was that it would be silent, broadcasting by some means to the house staff but not wailing sirens that might bring outsiders to investigate. But that had been the whole point of—

A metal barrier was rising up out of the floor, cutting off access to the suite of rooms ahead.

Move.

Donal reacted by instinct, trusting his intuition—
I
am
the music
—and sprinted forward—
fast
—feeling a wash of stinking coldness rise up in the atrium behind him—
faster!
—and then he was hurdling the rising steel, foot touching the carpet beyond, catching it, and he stumbled.

Ceiling and walls rotated past him, and he continued the roll to one side, catching one hallucinatory sight of a vast, dark reptilian eye focused on him as the steel barriers slammed shut, cutting off the outside world.

Donal was safe.

It sings . . .

He felt a cold, eerie singing deep in his bones and knew what it meant. A mage was very close.

Commissioner Vilnar came down the outside of the building like a descending bat, his overcoat billowing capelike as he dropped onto all fours. Startled deathwolves could see the glowing bluish form that enveloped him: Gertie, the wraith whose servitude in police HQ had always been associated with a certain . . . latitude.

Gertie billowed and fluttered back into the safety of the vast dark tower. Around the commissioner, the deathwolves growled, their amber eyes glowing.

“FenSeven,” said the commissioner. “And FenNineBeth. Are you ready for the hunt?”

“Grrr . . .”

“Come on.” The commissioner led the way, moving fast for his bulk. “Let's check—Damn it.”

The Avenue of the Basilisks was filled with people spilling out of theaters, heading for the restaurants. Marnie could be anywhere among the thousands of people along the vast canyonlike thoroughfare or in any of the two-hundred-story-high towers that walled it.

“She's got dark hair,” muttered Commission Vilnar, “and this is her scent.”

From his overcoat pocket he drew out the tissue that he'd retrieved from Marnie's trash can.

“Unless she's hexed this with some kind of trick,” he added to the deathwolves. “So you be careful, boys.”

The deathwolves flitted off into the crowds, lean and dangerous and scarcely visible to rich folk who were unaccustomed to seeing true predators. They would not have cared to realize that there were dangers deadlier and more immediate than wheeling and dealing in boardrooms and clubs.

Laura and Alexa ran out onto the street. Alexa stopped dead, seeing the commissioner, her mouth opening though she was unable to speak.

Then the Vixen came hurtling toward them and spun sideways in a squealing hand-brake turn, its doors popping open as it slewed to a halt. The car was empty inside.

Laura looked at the commissioner.

“Go on.” He made a pushing gesture. “Go after her!”

Blinking, Laura jumped inside the car and got moving before Alexa could even react.

“All right,” said Commissioner Vilnar to Alexa as the Vixen moved off into the traffic. “You're with me.”

Alexa turned to follow the Vixen, then stopped.

“No,” said the commissioner. “We're going back inside.”

Donal entered a gallery of bones. Unmoving, they dragged at him.

Petrified skeleton hands, some gold-framed displays (lit by soft spotlights) that were only a single knucklebone, then some isolated ribs, and, in a special triptych arrangement, three entire skulls that grinned at Donal as he stumbled past.

They sang.

Unfocused visions swirled around Donal, and he dropped the submachine gun without even noticing as the pains and cramps shifted through him, a warning against fighting the beautiful dreams.

They sang to him.

No. Help . . .

All around, the bones were calling, promising their wild, seductive, artistically sublime dreams.

Diva, help me.

Or was she the last person who would want to help, even if she were alive to come to Donal's aid? Perhaps he deserved to fail, to die immersed in a wondrous trance.

There were inner doors with ornate handles, and Donal had already grasped them in his bare hands before he realized his mistake—for the handles were of carved bone, the bones of long-dead artists.

No . . .

A maelstrom of visions pulled him down.

There were ruby seas where the song of small-breasted mermaids lured him to—

No.

—the living forest, where flowers breathed scents such as he had never—

I will not . . .

—their myriad hands trailing softly down his skin, cupping his—

. . . allow this to . . .

—pulling him into—

. . . happen.

—swirling pastels and the feel of—

NO!

He broke the visions apart.

Because . . .

And stood there, panting, soaked with sweat, having thrown the doors open to reveal the final chamber within.

I am the song.

By his own will, Donal had thrown off the bones' ensorcellment, but it was far too late as he saw what lay inside the chamber.

He fought back the urge to vomit.

Three men stood around a flat altar: Councillor Gelbthorne and Alderman Finross, and another whose shock of white hair and photogenic features were familiar, as of someone famous seen only in newspapers. Donal thought he might be a politician. But the corpse that was stretched out on the altar was more than familiar, since it was at Donal's hand that the man had died.

It was the corpse of Malfax Cortindo.

While all around . . .

Sweet Thanatos, no.

. . . lay the pale discarded detritus of the components they had used up in their work, the power source that had fueled whatever strange hex they had cast and shaped. It was almost an anticlimax when the corpse's eyelids twitched, because it had to be worth it, even for the perverted mages of the Black Circle: worth it to have used up the resources they had.

The floor was littered with dozens of dead children, their blank eyes open, never to see anything again.

Gelbthorne raised a hand and pointed at Donal. Orange lightning spat across the room . . .

. . . and burst apart as it struck Donal's chest. He took a half step back, knowing he had no time to run into the gallery of bones and retrieve the submachine gun he had dropped while the visions had clutched him.

Last chance . . .

But that was the moment when Malfax Cortindo's corpse jerked into movement, spun on the altar, and sat up, then stepped down onto the floor, his bare feet squashing the dead children on which he stood.

There would be no complaints from those soft corpses.

“Fuck you,” said Donal, and ran.

Laughter followed him as he threw himself out through the doorway into the room where the bones' attraction pulled like riptides through his soul. But it was a second's work to snatch up the submachine gun, turn, and squeeze the trigger.