Crash Deluxe (5 page)

He grabbed my shoulders and forced me to look into his eyes. My desire was more than palpable - it was intoxicating.

I saw his control slip, felt his hand move to my waist, tug at my clothes.

‘Get on top of me,’ I said.

Teece sprawled with me sideways onto the bed. In one movement he wrenched my skirt up round my waist. Maybe dresses
were
good for some things.

Heedless of regret or consequences - and of the knife sheaths strapped to my thighs - he was inside me with thrusts of fierce possession, bruising my body, riding me across the edge.

My moan turned into a scream of pleasure. Orgasms piled over each other, saturating my body with waves of release and pleasure.

Inside me, though, something far darker was drinking them in.

My response left Teece panting, trying to stay with me.

We tumbled on to the floor, a mess of limbs and bed sheets, to the sound of Merry 3# screeching a message.

‘
Parrish. Message for Teeeeeece. It’s Honeeey.
’

I swear that p-diary was possessed.

Teece rolled away from me almost immediately. He stood, pulling his shirt down, zipping his pants guiltily. The look on his face wasn’t exactly afterglow.

‘You’re an addiction, Parrish, and I want the cure,’ he said harshly. He stalked out of the room.

I lay on my back, momentarily sated, and contemplated the shape of the damp stains on the ceiling. I wasn’t hurt and angry like Teece. I was probably going to die soon and everything I did felt good in comparison to that.

The parasite echoed its frustrations in my mind. It strained for release. If it found it - I might as well be dead.

‘Paaarrr-iiisshh.’

Merry 3# again. I hauled myself up and my skirt down, and went to see what the fuss was about. She shimmered in the corner next to the comm screen, dressed up in clothes identical to mine.

It wasn’t meant to be flattery - more like ridicule.

‘What do you want?’

She put a translucent finger to her head and stuck her tongue in her cheek as if trying to remember.

‘Oh, yeah. Teece left the door open.’

‘And?’ I spun on my heel.

‘Bad company,’ she trilled.

I swung around. A stranger with an ugly expression was framed in the doorway. I sized him up in the time it took me to drop my hands to my thighs. Competitor. Probably here on his own whim, though maybe on a cheap contract.

He was my size: scarred fingers, boxer’s stance, unarmed. This scud liked to do it with his hands.

That gave me an advantage despite my pistol - a replacement for the one I’d traded with Daac - being in my kitbag. I lifted my skirt and went for a knife.

His eyes widened in interest for a second.

It bought me a precious second of edge, though, and I threw. My aim was straight but the stranger was no longer there. A blur of movement to one side, and everything had changed. Including him.

The boxer had disappeared and a beast came at me instead - a shadowy thing hunched onto massive thighs.

I dived sideways and fell heavily against the comm. The beast leaped over me to the other side of the room. As I scrambled to my feet he repeated the action, this time raking me with long-clawed feet. Blood spurted from a graze along my arm.

Merry 3# fizzed and spluttered over my shoulder, then came back screaming a girlie war cry and flashing guns.

Cut the show, Merry. How about just shooting the bastard?
‘Get me some help,’ I shouted at her.

The beast edged in front of my bedroom, cutting off access to my guns. I eased more upright and calculated whether I could make the front door. As I willed the distance to shrink, it filled with shapes.

That’s why it was playing.
More of ’em. Growling and howling.

I felt at the waist of my skirt. The Cabal dagger was still there. Luckily Teece hadn’t ruined his manhood on it. I launched myself at them without ceremony.

They fought each other to get through the doorway, giving me a chance to pick them off.

One, slit throat. Punctured adrenals.

Two, slit throat. Punctured adrenals.

Three, straight into the heart. Punctured adrenals. Then the first one jumped me from behind. It tore my skirt right off and took a chunk out of my neck.

Blood in a fountain - high. My blood. The world hazed.

 

‘Boss?’

I blinked. I hadn’t passed out exactly, more like hovered between two realities. Link, Glida and some of the feral children I’d helped in the past, crowded through the door. They liked to follow me around to keep an eye on things. I used to think it was cute. Right now I was just damn grateful. Calmly, they sprayed acid in the last shape-changer’s face. His screaming banished the last of my hallucinations.

He toppled on to me. Which was bad . . . and good - at least I was covered.

The ferals tugged at the body, trying to move it.

‘Leave the body,’ I grunted. ‘Get Teece.’

‘I’m here, Parrish. Merry called me,’ he answered. I couldn’t see him but at least he’d come, and he’d been running.

‘Get . . . everyone . . . out. Don’t let them touch the blood.’ My ribs felt broken with the shape-changer’s weight. I concentrated on just getting air in until I heard the door clunk shut. Then the weight shifted.

Teece stared down at me. His expression shifted from shock to amusement to disappointment. The room looked like a serial killer’s debut. Dead shape-changers lay around and I was semi-naked and awash in blood.

‘I left too early - as usual,’ he said, shaking his head sadly.

I tried to laugh but my chest burned and ached at the same time and it came out like a gurgle.

‘Who were they?’

I craned my neck up. The beasts had reassumed their human shapes in death.

‘Nobody,’ I lied.
Loyl was wrong. I’m not the only one left.
‘That’s the problem. Even
nobodies
want to kill me.’

He nodded in resigned agreement. ‘I know how they feel.’

‘Teece,’ I whispered as I lay there. ‘I’m sorry about before.’

‘Yeah, I know. So am I.’

‘Paaarrrrr-ish.’

Merry again. ‘What?’ I growled.

‘Message from Laaa-rrrry.’

I was on up my knees in a second. ‘What?’

‘Loyl Daac and a bunch of his men are looking for yoo-oou.’

Teece moved to the door. ‘I’ll stall him.’

I nodded. ‘Buy me ten minutes and I’ll be polite and sweet for the rest of my life.’

We didn’t smile. Or say goodbye.

I took a quick shower to wash away the shape-changers’ blood.

My ribs felt like they were broken and the mark on my neck resembled an overcooked love-bite. They wouldn’t take long to fix, though. The only constructive thing the parasite had done for me - accelerated my healing.

But what had it done to the rest of The Tert? Loyl obviously hadn’t dealt with the problem. The parasite must be spreading of its own accord. Those shape-changers were just the beginning. Not all of them would choose to transform into beasts, either. They could just as easily come after me in the shape of Teece or Ibis.

That thought got me worried enough to make one last, quick call - to Lize, a bounty hunter who owed me.

‘Parrish Plessis?’ She squinted into the comm like she hoped she was seeing things.

‘Nice trip down the coast?’ I asked. A casual reminder that I’d let her live when she’d tried to kidnap me - a contract put up by Leesa Tulu.

She looked embarrassed.

‘I need you to watch someone’s back,’ I said.

‘Who?’

‘Actually’ - I grinned - ‘there are a few of them.’

I gave her names and a short version of what she was watching out for.

She looked more scared than I liked. ‘I’ve heard stuff, but I didn’t believe it. What you’re telling me - shape-changers - it could be anyone any time.’

‘You got it.’

‘I can’t promise nothing on a deal like that.’

‘Do your best. And I’ll do my best to forget you ran a contract on me.’

She frowned and sighed. ‘You gonna use this for ever? I’m just a grrl trying to earn a living.
Can’t you dig that?
’

‘You keep these people safe while I’m outta town and I’m off your case for good. Deal?’

She held the back of her hand to the screen, Tertstyle.

I returned the gesture and cut the line before she could ask ‘How long?’

I ran my checklist one last time. I wouldn’t be coming back to get something with Daac dogging me. Reluctantly I locked the Cabal dagger into my gun safe. Then I slipped Ike’s wetware onto a chain alongside a good-luck charm Honey had told me would convince Merv that I was kosher.

Knickers, some dress-ups and the address for my Net repository with my fake identity. On impulse I snapped the lid on Merry 3# and bundled her into my pocket as well. She wasn’t gonna do me much good here and her scream was damn near a nuclear weapon.

I velcroed the strap on my borrowed luggage closed, slung it over my shoulder and spared a glance in the reflect.

New clothes.

New hair.

Same old grudges.

Time to move.

 

 

 

 

I
wiggled my toes to stop myself squirming as the laser sculpted my face and wondered about the ridge of scale along my cheekbone.

Dr Yan Drastic, Plastique’s best cosmetic man, told me flat out he couldn’t do anything about it - it wouldn’t come off. He didn’t even know what it was. When he tested the edges my reaction became violent.

We compromised on a paint job. He said he’d make it look like a beauty spot.

After the face-sculpt came an iris-tint - all done in a quickie package. Money really could buy almost anything in Plastique.

As I waited for fake skin to set over my scars and the nanos to gobble my blemishes, it occurred to me how ironic it was to be having a physical make-over when all I had to do was stop fighting the parasite and I’d be able to shape-change.

When the face-over was finished, I bought a language infusion from Leong Shu’s Smart Shit stall. He hit me up with it right then and there. When I asked him about the warranty he threw in an extended dictionary to shut me up.

‘How long?’

‘Three months if you don’t overuse it,’ he said in his perfectly snobby way.

Breaking my own rules, I flagged a Pet to get me to the Trans station. If Loyl Daac was out looking for me, I wasn’t going to make it easy for him.

My mind ran another list as the Pet trundled me out to the Pomme de Tuyeau depot.

I slipped Ike’s wetware out and fingered the delicate webbing. Maybe along the way I would finally learn what the Eskaalim was.

Most of the time I believed it to be alien. But occasionally I got a reality shift, especially when people like Loyl Daac practised their mind games on me.

I mean, if anyone had told me that they were infected with an alien parasite who lived off the epinephrine in their body I’d have thought they were nuts.

On the other hand, I was the one living with hallucinations and a voice in my head. Although the hallucinations had got less since Dis, the inner voice was there like breathing.

I wanted to believe it was a parasite, and that was the dangerous thing. There’s no tragic glamour in being just stone-cold crazy.

Or paranoid.

And I was having a tankload of trouble trusting anyone.

Teece had fallen in love with someone else, and Daac . . . well, his treachery was worthy of Judas.

I sighed and returned to my mental list as the Pet ploughed a path past brawling Fishertown slummers.

Bras was a kid who’d helped me once and had wound up adopted by the banking royalty of Viva and head of her own company - the new face of prosthetics.

Gywnn was an amputee who lived in a drain on the Tert/Viva border. He’d been a one-time Pan-Sat athlete, a weightlifter who’d been reduced to minding an opening to the old sewer labyrinth. I’d promised him I’d get some turk called Trunk off his back, and I hadn’t been keeping my promises as well as I’d have liked.

I decided to call the last two items on the list my before-someone-puts-a-bullet-in-me resolutions and went back to the top . . .

 

I was still recapping the order in my head when I caught the Trans up to Fishertown and dropped past Teece’s bike biz.

Mama was minding shop for Teece while he was minding shop for me.

‘You gotta nerve, turning up here,’ the ex-sumo glowered.

I still owed Teece for the damage to the last bike I’d hired from them. Mama looked as if he wanted nothing more than to suffocate me between his huge thighs in settlement.

‘So they tell me,’ I said. ‘If Loyl-me-Daac comes looking for me, Mama, you send him south, OK?’

Mama grimaced. At least, I think that’s what it was. The fat folds on his face and neck made it hard to tell. ‘You got it coming, grrl,’ he added.