Bone Song (33 page)

The deafening, stuttering crash of automatic fire banged and reverberated in the enclosed space. Donal's teeth were clenched as round after round poured back through the doorway, clustered on the targets: the corpse and the three men who . . .

There was a click as the magazine emptied.

. . . were still on their feet.

A mist of black powder hung before the trio: the remains of the bullets dissipating as they struck whatever shield the mage, Gelbthorne, had gestured into place.

The gesture that now pulled back the lips of Cortindo's dead face was anything but human. The decayed tongue inside the blackened teeth moved. There might have been a glimpse of maggots within, before the corpse closed its mouth once more.

At least this thing could not yet speak. By the time it had regenerated that far, Donal would be dead.

Oh, Laura. I'm . . .

All four mages, Cortindo included, raised their hands to destroy him.

. . . sorry.

An explosion behind Donal blew the steel doors open. The percussive pressure hammered Donal through the opening, back into the chamber where the mages stood.

He fell atop dead children.

In the doorway, a pale figure stood with a heavy hexzooka over one shoulder. Beyond, revealed in the great atrium, a riderless bone motorcycle was harrying prey, darting at a great scaled reptile that was spitting in fear.

“The marines have descended.” Donal smiled.

“We always do,” said Harald.

Orange lightning gathered around the four dark mages as they prepared to counterstrike—but in that moment more motorcycles, dark-green with flashing lights, growled and screeched into the atrium.

Officers on foot in dark-green uniforms with white helmets, automatic weapons held at port-arms, flooded in after them. And bringing up the rear, looking calm and relaxed, came the narrow figure of Temesin, smoking a cigarette, holding his detective's shield out in front of him.

Donal looked at the four mages.

“Game over,” he said.

“Aaah . . .” The sound that came from Cortindo's dead mouth was horrifying.

But then Councillor Gelbthorne and the white-haired man took hold of the reanimated Cortindo, wrapping their arms around him in a kind of bizarre group hug.

The white-haired man spared time for one malevolent glance at Donal before they lowered their heads and concentrated. The air shifted and wavered and began to rotate. Strange geometries were manifesting themselves.

“No. Don't leave—” This was Alderman Finross, terrified.

But the trio of mages had formed a conglomerate whole that was revolving, faster and faster, until it twisted, turned through an angle that was entirely impossible, orthogonal to every axis of Donal's experience . . . and was gone.

All that was left was the broken, weeping alderman, leaning against the abandoned altar, surrounded by two score dead children, maybe more.

Donal got to his feet.

“No! It was Blanz. He . . . he
ensorcelled
me!” Alderman Finross was almost babbling. “Please, please don't kill . . . I'll tell you everything. They left me no choice but to—”

He stopped as he realized how much he was incriminating himself.

“Senator Blanz,” said Donal. “That prick.”

Alderman Finross toppled to the floor and lay outstretched.

“I think he fainted.” Temesin had walked inside, unnoticed by Donal. “Too bad. I was enjoying the sound of his voice.”

Donal's nostrils flared, and he gestured around the room. “Doesn't this bother you?”

Temesin considered the small corpses. “I've seen worse.”

“Shit . . .”

Then Temesin turned to Harald.

“Impressive entrance,” he said.

“Yeah.” Harald spat to one side, then grinned. “Want me to bust up any other buildings while I'm here?”

Laura, inside the Vixen, cruised along the Avenue of the Basilisks, scanning the crowds, looking for the dark-haired figure of Eyes—Marnie Finross.

The problem was that Laura could only envision the woman with those silver cables hanging from her eyes, attaching her to the refractive apparatus that led to the rooftop mirror system. Actually recognizing the woman's features would be impossible.

And there were so many hundreds, thousands of people on the street. If she'd fled inside a building . . .

“I give up,” Laura told the Vixen. “I don't see any chance of spotting the bitch.”

But then she saw two low shapes flitting among the people's legs and a sudden scuffling, and the deathwolves had pulled a woman's coat off with their fangs. The woman's long white hair swung as she sprinted away from the deathwolves.

“Damn it, that's her. Even her hair color's changed.”

The woman kicked off her high heels as she sprang toward the sheer wall of the nearest tower and began to slither upward. Marnie Finross's palms and soles adhered to the surface as she quickly ascended, while all the two deathwolves could do was sit down on their haunches and howl.

The Vixen screeched to a halt, then trembled.

“Come on,” said Laura. “I know you can do it.”

Laura touched the gear stick—just a touch—and the Vixen turned and rolled forward, heading straight for the building as Marnie Finross had done. Then the car morphed her rear wheels fast like springs and bounded ten feet upward.

The Vixen's wheels quickly spun and re-formed into splayed talons arranged like steel flowers, and the car hit the wall with all four spiked wheels. It began to climb upward, rolling slowly straight up the surface, engine growling with the effort, slowing. . . . Then the car stopped and hung there, quivering.

Laura bit her lip.

The Vixen backed down to the sidewalk, groaned, and rolled back onto the roadway, not bothering to remorph her wheels back to normal configuration.

“It's all right,” Laura said, patting the steering wheel. “Really.”

Even as a youngster, the Vixen had been scared of heights.

Then the Vixen's engine sighed. Her headlights swiveled upward, becoming impossibly bright, as all power diverted into the bulbs, transforming them into spotlights whose brilliant white beams swung high up the tower. They pinpointed the still-climbing figure that was Marnie Finross.

“Oh, that's good,” murmured Laura. “I think that's all we'll need.”

The Vixen's spotlights followed Marnie Finross all the way to the top, where she climbed onto the roof and was lost from sight. For a second Laura thought that was it, the end of everything. Then a tiny red glow, then several red glows from high above, told her that it was fine, it was all right, the case had come to a conclusion.

Laura touched the driver's door and it popped open. She stepped onto the sidewalk.

“I won't be long,” she said.

The building's doorman used his passkey, accompanying Laura inside the penthouse express elevator. It shot very fast up toward the top level and slowed only in the last few seconds. He walked with her along the hallway and opened the armored glass doors that led outside, then he stopped and gasped.

“Don't worry,” said Laura. “They won't hurt you.”

But the same could not be said of Marnie Finross.

“They're, they're . . .”

“My friends,” said Laura. “Just my friends.”

Ranged all around the rooftop were cats.

Hundreds of cats.

And every cat's eyes glowed crimson in the night, entrancing the one who had dared to look upon them.

Marnie Finross's catatonic body lay curled and paralyzed like some hardened fossil of bygone eons, her mind disintegrated into madness, shattered into shards that could never be repaired.

Laura smiled.

“Thank you.”

Meanwhile, deep in the hidden basements of police HQ, it took all of Alexa's strength to haul Commissioner Vilnar's senseless body out of the chamber where he had sought answers. He had known the quest would knock him unconscious, had trusted Alexa to remove him from the place that would kill him if he stayed inside for too long.

She strained—he was heavy!—and pulled and eventually dragged him into the stone corridor, clearing the doorway. She glanced back inside the chamber at the roiling, nova-white light . . .and then the door slammed shut of its own accord, hiding the chamber's interior.

On the floor, Commissioner Vilnar moaned.

“Here.” Alexa unstoppered the water bottle he'd told her to bring, raised his head, and poured a few drops between his lips. “Good.”

In a minute he had come around. Whatever was in the bottle, it was more than water. He took a deep breath, then held out his hand so Alexa could help him heave his bulk upward and regain his feet.

“You'll go far in this department,” he told Alexa. “Not every network of allies is as corrupt as the Black Circle.”

“Um...No.” Alexa could not help glancing at the closed door.

“But you won't ever tell anyone what you saw in there.” Commissioner Vilnar's eyes seemed very large and round. “Will you?”

Alexa swallowed.

“N-Never.”

“That's what I thought. Now you and I are going to brief the others. All right?”

“Yes, sir.”

The smile that crossed Commissioner Vilnar's face looked inhuman. After what he'd just been through, Alexa was surprised he could smile at all.

“That Senator Blanz,” he said, “thinks he's such a tricky bastard.”

“Sir?”

“Hiding right out in the open. But we'll fix him—No.”

Alexa stayed silent, not daring to ask questions. Things were moving fast.

“That honor belongs to the team. Laura Steele will lead the arrest. Somewhat appropriate, don't you think?”

Alexa smiled at last.

“Yes,” she said. “I think that would be perfect.”

T
he state capitol was a
great nine-sided, distorted polygon over which permanent dark clouds floated, like streamers of black ink through the indigo sky. Despite the quicksilver rain, journalists were arranged on the steps to photograph the arriving senators. Today was an important day.

It did not matter that the man who had proposed the bill was not here. Voting on the Vital Renewal Bill did not require Senator Blanz's presence. Part of the interest among the journalists, of course, was to inquire about the conflicting rumors surrounding the senator's disappearance. No one among the state legislature was willing to comment—at least not for the record.

Flashbulbs popped as paramedic mages carried a light palanquin from a newly arrived ambulance. Today's vote was likely to be a close thing, so that even councillors who were on their sickbeds—possibly their deathbeds—had answered the summons to the capitol.

This wizened figure belong to Councillor Will Sharping, a grand old liberal who was an icon for the younger generation. Sharping was respected, even among his opponents, as a gentleman of the old school, one who would never stoop to the sharp tactics seen so often nowadays.

There was speculation as to how the councillor might vote, because he could influence others decisively, and not just members of his own party.

Inside the capitol, from the viewing gallery, Laura and Donal stood beside a stone pillar. They watched the councillors take their seats and observed as the mages bore the palanquin inside and somehow collapsed it, so that Councillor Sharping appeared to be sitting like an ordinary councillor on an ordinary chair.

“Let's do it,” whispered Laura.

“Yes.”

It had been three days since Donal returned from Illurium, and every nerve was taut as he and Laura descended among the politicians. Could it really be over soon?

The Speaker of the House was enunciating the terms of the bill, prior to the voting.

“. . . that the rights to counsel, to marriage, and to employment be immediately revoked from all nonhuman, in-human, and ex-human beings . . .”

The man's voice faltered as he caught sight of Laura and Donal coming down the steps. Perhaps the Speaker was more of a mage than he looked, able to detect that Laura was a zombie just by glimpsing her.

“. . . to, er, take under state ownership all liens and properties currently held in title by such . . .”

Laura halted first. Behind her, Donal pushed his jacket open, revealing his favorite Magnus in its new shoulder holster, which was a present from Laura.

Then Laura reached inside her bag, pulled out her detective's shield, and cast her voice: “I'm Commander Steele, Tristopolis PD. And”—replacing the shield inside her bag, she withdrew a vellum document inscribed with purple ink—“this is a warrant for the arrest of Senator Blanz—”

Murmurs grew all around the chamber. Didn't this woman know that Senator Blanz was missing?

“In other words, I'm arresting
you.
” In her other hand she already held handcuffs, and now she headed toward the wizened figure with the wispy white hair.

Above her, the Speaker of the House coughed.

“Young lady, you're making a risible mistake. That is most manifestly Councillor Sharping, whose—”

But Donal stepped forward then, taking solid hold of the wizened man's wrist. As Donal had expected, the strengthening of his sense of self—which was the witch's and the bones' true gift—held fast now.

He saw through illusion.

I am . . .

And he dispelled illusion in the eyes of others.

. . . the song.

To the assembled state government, it appeared that the air shook and broke apart, until the man in Donal's grasp looked strong and vital, and the hair atop his head, though white, was thick and bushy.

“We've got you, Blanz.”

Orange lightning cracked through the capitol chamber.

The impact flung Donal back. Protected as he was by a hexlar vest, reinforced by federal spellbinders flown in for the job, Donal was unharmed by the blast itself. For a second he thought that everything remained fine, that the operation was going down as planned.

Then he saw that Senator Blanz had pulled off a trick that was more sleight of hand than true sorcery.

He held Donal's Magnus in his hand, aimed directly at Donal.

No . . .

Then Blanz swiveled his aim and squeezed. Donal lunged forward, knowing already what had happened.

Laura's head blew apart in a spray of bone splinters and dark blood.

NO!

Donal's fingers clawed for Blanz's eyes as the impact took him in the heart, and the bang that followed seemed far away, and everything went black as Donal died . . .