Reality Hack (26 page)

Nisa grumbled something about fascist, Big Brother police states which Kellog ignored, and then they walked into the break room to find Norbery staring at a computer tablet. He looked up at them, opened his mouth, and Nisa said, ‘Yes, it was a full moon last night and I didn’t get much sleep.’

‘Thought that might be the case,’ the witch said, pushing a mug of coffee across the table. ‘I put something in this to get your brain firing, but you need to make up the rest. Faline won’t help, because she’ll be… excited for another day at least, but make sure she lets you rest at the weekend.’

Nisa sagged into a chair. ‘She’ll be better tonight. A bit. I mean, she was last time.’

‘Drink your coffee. We got this back from Manchester.’ He turned the tablet around and showed them what seemed to be a computer-drawn image of a human face. A girl, around Nisa’s age or a little younger. ‘They made her a blonde with blue eyes, but we don’t know that.’

Nisa peered at the image, frowning. It kept going out of focus, so she drank some coffee and kept glaring at it. There was something about it. ‘I’m sure I know her…’

‘It’s quite possible you’ve seen her around your area,’ Kellog replied. ‘The Skinwalker wouldn’t have gone far for a first human victim.’

Nisa nodded and took another gulp of coffee. It had a slightly odd flavour, like cinnamon or something had been added. Maybe that
was
one of Norbery’s special ingredients. Now all she needed was for it to work and kick her brain out of neutral and… Her eyes widened. ‘Oh fuck, that’s Jilly.’

‘Jilly?’

‘I don’t know her full name. She’s one of the Queens. Or she was.’

‘She’s gone missing?’

‘No. She made a play for leadership of the gang. Trina beat her off, but if she’s a Skinwalker…’

‘Then she’ll be back. We need to find her. Can you get in touch with this Trina? That’s Katrina Norris, yes? She was on your known associates list.’

‘And we’re back to Big Brother. I don’t have a number for her, but I know where she lives.’

‘All right, we’ll take my car.’

Tower Hamlets.

Trina opened her eyes, but there was still nothing but darkness. That and the pain in her arms. She had been strung up by her wrists, blindfolded, and there was something stuffed into her mouth which seemed to be firmly tied in place. Her toes just about touched the floor and pushing up on them to relieve the strain on her arms also resulted in the sound of movement nearby.

‘You’re awake. Good.’ Jilly’s voice, but not. There was something wrong about it. Something… not quite natural. ‘I didn’t want to start while you were unconscious.’

Start what? What the Hell was the blonde bitch planning to do?

‘You’re wondering what I’m going to do with you, obviously. I’m not going to tell you. I want it to be a surprise. Well… I want the individual experiences to be a surprise. I’m still learning, but I think I’m getting better. I think… I think you’ll be able to savour the experience almost as much as I do.’

This was not Jilly. Trina was sure of that now. There was something about the way she talked, something unnatural. And Trina was quite sure she had known Jilly as well as anyone, and she had not been a serial killer. And whoever this was, she was talking like a serial killer. And that was when Trina knew she was going to die.

‘I am going to let you in on one thing,’ Jilly went on. ‘I don’t see any point in holding that back. I’m going to kill you. You’re going to die a horrible death and then I’m going to skin you. But don’t worry, by the time you die you’ll wish it had happened
hours
before.’

Trina swallowed. Her throat was dry. She absolutely believed that this woman, this not-Jilly, was going to do just as she said.

‘Let’s get started, shall we?’

Trina felt her T-shirt being pulled taut and heard fabric being cut, and she wondered how long she had left to live.

~~~

Trina was not answering the buzzer for her flat, and finding her number had just got them voice mail, but Nisa had had the bright idea of stopping by her flat on the way to Trina’s. Despite the fact that Witch Cats needed far less sleep than humans, Faline was distinctly grumpy about being dragged out of the flat where she had been happily making up lost sleep which she had not, in fact, lost.

However, after Nisa had explained the situation, the little black cat had padded quietly off into Trina’s building, oblivious to little things like solid matter which would have been more difficult for the two humans to negotiate.

‘Jill Meers,’ Kellog said as they waited in his car. ‘Hanson checked through the records and found a list of known members of the Queens. Jill Meers is on it.’

‘Could be her,’ Nisa replied. ‘They always just get introduced as “Jilly” or “Sal.” It was six weeks before Trina told me her full name and she was trying to get me in bed.’

‘Huh.’ There was a pause and then, ‘You know if we find her and not the Skinwalker…’

‘Yeah… Is there some kind of test we can do?’

‘Yes, but you have to be ready to lose your friend.’

‘If it comes to that, I’ll have lost her already. We’ll be eliminating a monster walking around in her skin. What’s the procedure?’

‘Usually? Shoot the damn thing until it stops moving and then incinerate the corpse with magic. Has to be magic. Only magic can finish them. Well, you can dissolve them in acid, but that’s usually harder to arrange.’

‘Which makes them a real annoyance to all of us,’ Faline announced from the back seat. Nisa twisted around and looked back, and it took Kellog a second or two to realise why she was doing it. ‘She is not in the flat,’ the cat went on into Nisa’s mind. ‘Her bed has not been slept in and I could see no evidence that she was home at all last night.’

‘Shit!’ Nisa snapped aloud. ‘Thanks, Faline. She says it doesn’t look like Trina got home last night.’

‘Which probably means it has her, but it doesn’t mean she’s dead.’

‘Just being killed, slowly and painfully. Where?!’

Kellog grabbed his seat belt and started buckling in. ‘Hold on to something, Faline. I know where to start looking at least.’

~~~

Jilly, or whatever had taken her place, liked needles and seemed to have an instinct for where to put them to send searing pain through Trina’s body. The ones jammed through her nipples had been more or less expected and, truth be told, had more or less stopped hurting now. The thick ones that were rammed into joints… Those ones had Trina screaming into her gag every time.

It would often take a couple of tries to hit just the right spot, and that was somehow worse as when the needle was pushed slowly in, there would be the sharp stab as it entered and then the dull agony of it pushing through flesh. Then it would stop against bone and there would be an irritated grunt from Jilly and the needle would be yanked out, and there would be another stab. And then it would hit something instead of bone. A nerve? Fire would rip up through Trina’s body and she would be left jerking in her bonds while Jilly found another needle and selected a new spot.

And then it stopped. The pain from the needle that had gone into the back of her right knee was still lancing up her thigh and Trina did not notice for a minute that Jilly seemed to have wandered off. Then the blindfold was pulled off her head.

Jilly was not smiling. Straight-faced, she stood there and looked at Trina, almost as though she was trying to judge something in her expression. She was naked from the waist up. Blood streaked her skin in places, and smudges of the same showed on the worn denim jeans she was wearing. She was holding a large, nasty-looking hunting knife in her right hand, though it hung at her side almost as if forgotten.

‘I… didn’t ask to be like this,’ Jilly said. If she expected an answer she was not going to get one. Maybe answering was unnecessary anyway since her eyes were drifting away from Trina’s. ‘I mean it kind of just started and got out of control… and then there was… I mean, how do you get around being able to…’ Her eyes flicked up again, sparks of fire showing in the back of them. ‘I figured I was crazy. No one can do this shit. Stealing skins? That’s like Clive Barker crazy shit, right? That’s Stephen King,
Pet Cemetery
or something. Nuts. Then I killed Jill and… I’m getting way better at the skinning though. I had some practice.’ She looked away again and then wandered off, stepping out of Trina’s line of sight.

The room they were in… It looked like the front room of a house, though it was a little hard to tell. Someone, presumably Jilly, had tacked blankets over the windows and the only light came from a single table lamp on the floor near Trina’s feet. There was a sofa off on her left though and the decoration looked suburban, kind of bland for a girl who ran with a street gang. Trina tried to focus through the pain: had Jilly still been living with her parents?

‘I haven’t decided how to kill you yet.’ The voice was behind Trina’s back, not moving. ‘I could make it fairly quick and painless. I could pinch your nose shut and you’ll suffocate in a minute or two. Books say that’s not a bad way to go. I’ve been wondering, though, how many needles I can get into the base of your skull before I hit something vital.’ Trina almost flinched as she felt something touch her neck, a sharp point which slid up under her hair. ‘I might paralyse you before I kill you though…’ The pressure increased. ‘Maybe I’ll try a couple of these and then the other.’

~~~

The house looked like all the other ones on Carbis Road: not especially old, terraced with a paved area for parking off the street out front. The large Ford sedan parked outside it barely fitted, the boot jutting out over the pavement. It all looked normal, but there was something not quite right and it took Nisa a second to figure out what it was.

‘The curtains are drawn.’ She craned her neck to peer up at the two windows on the upper floor. ‘All the curtains are closed.’

‘Looks like more than that to me,’ Kellog said. ‘It looks to be heavier than just curtains.’

There was a sound from the back seat, a shuffle and a bit of a hiss, and Nisa turned to see Faline’s tail vanishing through the door. ‘Faline… Damn, she’s gone looking.’

‘That might be easier than us trying to look inside,’ Kellog replied. He reached into his jacket and produced his gun, checking the magazine.

Nisa swallowed and reached for her bag to get her own pistol. And then she heard the voice in her head. ‘Hurry!’

‘Shit, she’s in there!’ Grabbing her bag, she fumbled for the door handle and tried to force her way out even before the door had opened.

Kellog was more composed, swinging the door open as he began the process of summoning energy for a spell. He stepped out of the car and was on his feet before Nisa had the door open on her side, and he was stepping up to the door of the house as she struggled around the car and fumbled her gun out of her bag. Maybe the little zip-up pocket had not been such a great idea. And the house door opened as soon as he put his hand on it, which meant she knew what the spell was he had been working as he moved, and she knew what spell she should probably prepare herself.

Kellog pushed in, leading with his pistol through the small porch and into a dimly lit room with a sofa and tacky, mock-flock wallpaper, and Trina strung up by her wrists from a hook in the ceiling. Nisa felt her muscles tense at the sight of her friend and would-be lover hanging there. There were thick needles through her nipples, more metal sticking randomly out of joints and various areas of flesh. And there was no sign of Faline or the Skinwalker, but Trina was flicking her head rapidly toward the back of the house, behind her. There was a clattering sound from upstairs which seemed to indicate where their target was.

‘Wait here,’ Kellog said quietly. ‘If it comes out past me, shoot it.’

‘Right.’ Nisa looked up at Trina, hanging there naked and bloody. She
really
did not want the conversation that this was likely to result in, but Trina had been dumped into the weird world of London now…

Kellog moved forward, pushing open a door at the back of the little lounge. Nisa guessed that this would lead into a kitchen, or onto a hallway with stairs and a door into a kitchen. There had to be stairs back there somewhere, and why the Hell had Faline led the thing upstairs anyway? And the answer to that came as Faline dropped through the ceiling right in front of Nisa, falling gently to the floor with a serenity that belied the look of fear in the cat’s eyes.

‘She’ll come right after me,’ Faline’s voice said in Nisa’s head. ‘Down the stairs behind me.’

Nisa looked up at the back of her partner. ‘Kellog, she–’ Kellog’s huge gun fired three times and then there was a crashing sound which Nisa fervently hoped was the sound of the Skinwalker falling down the stairs, but somehow she did not really believe that, and when the Hell had she started building the fireball in her hand? And the door was yanked open right then and Nisa saw a female shape silhouetted against the light from the door at the back of the corridor and she threw the bolt she was holding right into Jilly’s chest without even thinking about what she was doing.

There was a scream, and Jilly-Skinwalker tumbled backward, collapsing onto the floor beside where Kellog was pulling himself upright. Nisa figured the thing must have hit him from the stairs and then tried to run past. Advancing, Nisa lifted her pistol and made sure the safety was off, and began firing into the still moving body even as the scent of burned flesh assaulted her nose. And then Kellog was firing as well. They both emptied their clips and reloaded, and kept firing. Kellog unloaded another seven rounds from the big IMI and then began summoning up a fire spell as Nisa kept shooting…

And then there was silence and the stink of burning, rotten flesh.

Westminster, October 10
^th
.

‘Your Mister Norbery is some sort of miracle worker,’ Trina said. She was still sounding like she had spent the last week screaming, but she was looking better now than she had when they had got her down from the ceiling of Jill Meers’ house. ‘I mean, I don’t know what he gave me, but I slept like a baby and I think I should be hurting more than I am.’