Darkwalker: A Tale of the Urban Shaman (30 page)

“
Stop whining,” the burly man growled.

“
What, you sayin’ it’s right?”

“
No, I’m sayin’ stop fuckin’ whining!” Remming put his beer down hard, the sound like a gavel falling. Several other patrons glanced in their direction, then quickly looked away. They were mostly guards; they knew what had happened in Riverwalk Park, and about its aftermath. Remming lowered his voice. “We both knew what could happen if things went wrong. Well, things went wrong. Deal with it. Just be glad that with the Beast running around, they couldn’t afford to suspend us for more than a few days. And be glad you’re not Mattingly, sitting in a cell without bail.”

“
What’d he do that for, anyway?” Turin asked, returning to the subject of their disastrous attack. “We agreed no guns.”

“
What do you want me to say? He panicked.”

“
Yeah. Well, I gotta admit, the Railwalker surprised me. Never seen anybody move that fast. Fair broke my wrist.”

“
That was one fucked-up night.”

“
Yeah.” Turrin looked at the dregs in the bottom of his beer glass, signaled the bartender for another. “Hey,” he said to Remming, “you tell Dobbs he was wrong about that mutie he thought was the Beast?”

“
Like I needed to.”

“
What do you mean?”

Remming took a deep breath and mustered his patience. He basically liked Turrin, but the guy could be dense at times. “You didn’t see Dobbs sitting outside the City Arms in his runabout, the night we braced the mutie? He knows we’re not moving on the guy.”

“
Huh.” Turrin digested that. “No, I didn’t see him. Dobbs seemed pretty certain about the whole thing. We don’t move on the mutie, you think he’d actually go to Kabanov with it?”

“
Nah.” Remming snorted. “Dobbs wouldn’t go to Kabanov if the ruskie had the only hooch on the west coast.” He sat thinking for a moment, then added, “But he might take his fuckin’ amateur guards out to do something about it.”

“
The Citizen’s Safety Committee?” Turrin laughed. “Bunch of lame-arse wankers. What are they gonna do?”

“
Individually, not much. But he gets a whole gang of ’em together, there could be real trouble.” Remming finished his beer, fished out his wallet, and dropped some bills on the bar. “Maybe we better pay Dobbs a visit after all.”

Turrin looked up from the beer he’d only sipped at as Remming stood up from the stool and started to move toward the door. “Hey,” he said to Remming’s back, “we’re suspended without pay. Not our problem.”

Remming stopped and turned, stared at his companion for a moment. Then he slapped Turrin on the shoulder, and Turrin yelped. “Fuck’s a matter with you?”

“
Me? ’Smatter with you, dickhead? We’re city guard, suspended or not. A lynching in Bay City isn’t our problem? Fuck that. I’m going to see Dobbs. You can come or not as you please.”

Turrin quickly chugged about half the remaining beer and followed in Remming’s wake.

“
Jezus, Elvis, and JFK, am I glad to see you guys!” Betty hauled her girth out from behind the bar and waddled toward Remming and Turin. A solitary old man stared into his drink at the back of the bar; otherwise, the place was deserted. That had to be a first even for a Tuesday night in the Bar of Gold.

“
Oh, fuck,” Remming muttered.

The fat woman clasped her shaking hands in front of her as if trying to still them. “Dobbsey made me promise not to call you, but you’re here now, and I’m so worried they’re gonna hurt that guy...”

“
The mutie?” Remming asked.

She nodded. “Dobbs was shooting his mouth, you know, the way he does, and—”

“
How many people?’

“
I dunno, thirty-five, maybe forty.”

“
How long ago did they leave?”

“
Five, maybe ten minutes.”

“
Turrin, call it in.”

“
What?” Turrin snorted. “We’re suspended. Besides, I don’t got a radio.”

Remming backhanded his friend’s shoulder. “Then use a phone! It’s a fucking lynch mob, Turrin! Call it the fuck in!”

Turrin did as he was told.

Auden had just taken a mouthful of gyro when his radio went off. One-handed, he fumbled the radio out and grunted at it. Listened, swallowing hard. Took a sip of coffee, and said, “Patch me through to the Railwalkers.” He looked up at the counterman. “Can you wrap this for me, please?” He tossed a few quid onto the counter. “Yeah, Railwalker Wolf? Auden. Seems some dickhead down Water Street thinks he’s found the Beast, a mutie who lives on Hallard. He’s leading a lynch mob to get the guy now. On the outside chance the dickhead is right, I figured you might want to know.” He listened for a second as he accepted the wrapped gyro, and then headed for the door.

Minutes later, Rainer Auden pulled his runabout into Hallard Street to find it full of people. The dispatcher had told him the caller reported forty or fifty people in the mob, but their numbers had swelled along the way, and now nearly a hundred people crowded the street before the City Arms apartments. Auden blared his siren and bulled the runabout through the crowd to the building.

Someone had been on the ball, he thought, seeing several uniforms had arrived before him. One runabout and one of the few full-sized guard autos were pulled up on the sidewalk, forming an impromptu barricade. Half a dozen uniformed guards held the crowd back, and farther down the sidewalk two more uniforms were holding back a couple of newsfeed anchors. Sergeant Roberts, who would have been the ranking officer until Auden’s arrival, stood at the front, arguing with Hanover Dobbs. Roberts was clearly doing his best to keep hold of his temper as Dobbs worked himself up to an apoplectic rage, ranting and shouting at him. Auden stepped up behind Roberts and put a hand on his shoulder. Dobbs stopped yelling and looked at Auden.

26. WOLF

Rok and Morgan were out to dinner together when Auden’s call came in to our suite. I agreed with Auden that it didn’t seem very likely some average citizen had discovered the lair of the Beast in an upscale apartment in the North End. And I seriously doubted the Beast was a mutie. Still, we couldn’t afford not to check it out. I decided not to interrupt my partners’ dinner, but to leave a message for them and go myself.

Rush hour might be over, but the streets around the City Plaza looked heavy with traffic. The address Auden had given me on Hallard Street was only a few blocks away, in the North End. I decided I’d make better time on foot.

I left the tower heading north on State. Within a block or two I was certain I was being followed. I reached the next intersection and dashed across against the light, one or two horns blaring at me. I kept my eyes on the store window opposite, watching to see if anyone tried to mimic my move, but no one did. I took a corkscrew path through the city streets, mindful that I was costing myself time, but determined to flush out my follower. Nothing.

Traffic was thinning out now. I stopped on the corner of Hale and First. Dammit, I knew there were eyes on me; I could feel them. I looked down Hale and saw a woman standing at the mouth of an alley, staring directly at me. She was small, slight, with wavy, blond hair. She wore huge, baggy jeans and a sweatshirt much too large for her. Her face was in shadow, but she seemed familiar. I took a step toward her, and as she turned to retreat into the alley, I saw her face clearly for an instant. It was Suzi Mascarpone. I dashed down Hale and crossed to the alley.

The alley was empty. I ran to the other end. Another alley led crosswise there, the length of the block. There was no one in sight. No wait, there to my left… a movement vanishing between two buildings. I raced to follow. Another empty alley. This one took me to Kurzweil Boulevard, a wider street, more trafficked than Hale. There were a number of pedestrians, but there was no sign of the harlot. I heard soft laughter behind me. It wasn’t a girl’s, but a man’s. I turned and looked. The man watching me from the other end of the alley was Arnold Hawthorne. He wore the same jeans and sweatshirt Suzi had, though they fitted him much better. Not a spirit, then. A shapeshifter. A crow cawed above me, and the man glanced up. I charged down the alley, and he fled.

By the time I turned the corner he was gone again. I ran until I hit the next cross alley, and glanced down it. No figure, but I heard the laugh again. I stopped, looked around.

“
Give it up, brother Railwalker,” a gravelly voice called. It echoed through the alleyways, impossible to trace the source. “You cannot win. And I’d rather not kill you.”

“
Why not?” I called back. “What makes me different? I’m working for Roth, too.”

Laughter. He was above me somewhere. I scanned the building tops, saw nothing. As the laughter faded, it seemed to be coming from the roof to my left. I leapt up, caught the edge of the lowest fire escape, and scrambled up. It was impossible to climb the fire escape quietly and quickly both, so I settled for doing it fast as I could.

“
I will kill you if I have to,” called the Beast as I climbed. “And I will eat your brains.”

I reached the roof, a flat expanse broken up by Tesla receivers and air vents, which otherwise appeared empty. I made a circuit of it anyway. No one was hiding behind the receivers or the vents. There was a flash of black in the air and something thumped down by my feet.

“
Take heed,” the voice called, this time seeming to come from a greater distance. The broken clump of black feathers at my feet had once been a crow. Its neck was broken.

I walked to the edge of the roof where a thigh-high wall bordered it. I looked down, searching the alleys, and up, scanning the roofs. No sign of the Beast.

I heard cawing. A crow alit on the wall beside me. Then another. I turned back to the roof, and the air was filled with black feathers and raucous calls. A moment later they had all settled, maybe forty of them, black shapes in the twilight with gleaming black eyes, eerily silent now except for the occasional rustle of feathers. All of them facing me, and the motionless black body before me. I knelt down, gently straightened the broken wings and neck. Then I began the Chant for the Dead.

It might never be entered in the files of the Bay City Guard, but I considered the Beast had just committed another murder. He had issued a challenge, killed one of my crow brothers. He knew what he was doing, I thought. I was always going to hunt him down, take care of business, do what a Railwalker does. But now the Beast had made it personal.

I finished the chant, bowed to my crow brothers, and climbed down the fire escape again, leaving them to take care of their fallen comrade.

27. HALLARD STREET, BAY CITY

Elvis wept, thought Remming, what a fucking mess. The mutie’s street was filled, one end of the block to the other, with angry bodies. He had no idea where Turrin had got to, but if not Turrin, someone had called it in. He could see the colored lights of the guard runabouts flashing off the buildings, and at the opposite end of the block the big dish antennas of two newsfeed vans.

He was able to walk barely twenty feet down the street before the press of bodies slowed his progress. This was as bad as City Plaza on New Year’s Eve, he thought as he began forcing his way to the front of the crowd. Worse, actually. New Year’s Eve revelers didn’t carry baseball bats, broken bottles, and the occasional firearm. It was like swimming through mud. He applied his elbows and fists, throwing his weight into the task of shoving bodies aside and moving forward between them. He was cursed and yelled at, but fortunately no one actually attacked him. He reflected he was lucky to be out of uniform. For all these idiots knew he was one of them, or it might have gone differently. The bullhorn blared again, a familiar voice—Roberts maybe, or Washington; the bullhorn distorted the voice too much to be certain—telling the crowd to disperse and go home.

After what seemed like hours he saw the front lines, the guard runabouts, and, jeez, they’d brought out one of the full-size cars—parked on the sidewalk, the guards ranged along them between the crowd and the building. He hoped they’d thought to put someone on the back entrance. He shouldered past Carter Evans and John Macchio. Macchio gave him a look, but he glared back, and the man backed down. Remming stopped directly behind Dobbs, as Dobbs shouted at Roberts, carrying on about bringing justice to our streets, and the monster the guard were protecting, yadda, yadda... Beyond Dobbs and Roberts, he saw Auden approaching from behind the vehicles.

Dobbs stopped shouting when he saw Auden step up behind Roberts. This was not good, he thought. Just when he’d been thinking they might bully their way past the guards to get to the mutie, here comes Investigator Trouble Auden. Well, the guards were still outnumbered, if it came to that. Maybe it was time to cry havoc and let loose the dogs of lynching. He was taking a breath to shout for the mob to charge when he felt the barrel of a gun pressed against his spine.

“
Back down,” Remming’s voice said in his ear. He turned his head slightly, caught Remming’s eye out of the corner of his own. “Back down right now,” Remming repeated, “or I swear I’ll blow your guts all over this street and take my chances with your mob.”