The Forever Drug (6 page)

She wore a black T-shirt with the sleeves ripped out to show off her tattooed arms, which had muscles like braided wire ropes as a result of climbing up and down to her squat in the trees above. Her trousers were navy blue with a gold stripe down the side; military-issue and probably boosted from some UCAS sailor who'd made the fatal mistake of straying into the Public Gardens after dark.

I was standing near the tree that held the squat she probably dossed down in. Keeping my moves slow— and maintaining eye contact with the girl the whole time—I unzipped and splashed my mark across the tree trunk. It was a challenge that even a human could understand.

The ganger let go of the rope, took a quick step toward me, and touched the barrel of her pistol to my chest.

I smiled. "You can't kill me with that," I told her.

It was only partially true. If she shot me in the head or spine I'd die, same as anyone else. But otherwise, I'd only have to shift to wolf form to regenerate the damaged tissue and bone. A bullet to the chest would hurt like drek, and would leave me gasping and bloody on the ground. But it wouldn't kill me.

She could see I wasn't bluffing. She lowered the pistol and cocked her head to one side. Her overlarge eyes stared at me, disconcertingly childlike in her adult face.

"Wha'cha want?"

"I'm looking for a troll with a horn like a unicorn's," I said as I zipped up my pants. "He's a Weed, like you." I was guessing, of course. The troll had been wearing a long-sleeved jacket when I saw him in the parking garage.

"Why?"

"I want to catch the thing that iced his chummers," I answered.

"Are you Star?" she asked in a voice that hissed with menace.

As I considered my answer, I heard a rustle in the branches overhead and felt something threadlike brush against the tuft of hair on the tip of my left ear. I kept absolutely still, knowing that if I made a wrong move now the monofilament noose would drop around my neck in a flash. Decapitation is something I sure as drek
can't
regenerate from.

"I'm a bounty hunter," I said. "Lone Star pays good nuyen for taking down dangerous paranormals like the one that killed the two Weeds up in the North End garage."

"Wha'cha talkin' about?" she snorted. "Stud and the others were druggin'. That was what flatlined 'em."

I shook my head. "It was a para. I saw it."

"You was there?"

"I happened by. I heard shooting and checked it out."

"Most folks would'a run the other way," she said.

"I'm not most folks." I gave her my most wolfish grin.

She considered, then said, "Wait a minnit." She raised her gloved hand and flicked her fingers in silent gangspeak.

We waited in the bedlam that was the Public Gardens, listening to the blaring boom boxes and shouts from overhead. A police chopper passed low over the park, its prop wash thrashing the tree branches while a searchlight stabbed down at the ramshackle shelters. I heard the splat of pistol fire, and a round or two zinged off the gold star that was painted on the chopper's armored belly. I suppressed a growl; the squatters in the park were firing at a Lone Star vehicle. But now wasn't the time to make an issue of it.

The chopper moved away, its rotor noise fading into the night.

A branch overhead creaked as a heavy weight bent it, and then a burly form slid down the rope the gang leader had used. It was the troll from the parking garage. He towered over me, more than two hundred kilos of pure menace. A stubby spiral horn jutted out of the center of his broad forehead, and his lower canines curved up and over his upper lip. One of his pointed ears was torn; the other was studded with earrings made from the pull tabs of soda pop cans. The troll looked as if he were in his early thirties, but was probably barely out of his teens. Trolls only live to about fifty, and mature early.

"Hello, Stud," I greeted him, guessing that his was the name the ganger girl had used earlier.

He stared at me a moment, then his eyes slid to the girl beside him. "Never seen this frigger before in my life."

"Yes you have," I said. "Watch." I shed my shirt and unzipped my pants, letting them fall around my ankles. As I dropped to hands and knees, I heard the girl's voice: "Likes to show off what he's got, doesn't he?"

Then I changed...

I swiveled my ears and caught the troll's sharp intake of breath as he watched my body shift into wolf form.

"You're the dog I saw in the garage," he whispered.

I panted happily, my tongue lolling. Then I shifted back...

The wide-eyed ganger girl eyed my human form appreciatively as I put my clothes back on. I shot her a wink, then spoke to the troll.

"That ball of light that I saw touching the elf girl's head—"

"My girlfriend," the troll rumbled. I could tell from his ugly frown that he'd crank me if I mentioned the fact that he'd accidentally put a bullet through her chest.

"It was a paranormal animal," I continued. "A corpselight. Where'd it come from?"

"It's Halo."

"Who's Halo?"

"Not who ... what." His expression melted into a dreamy smile. "That drug is some good," he answered. "Frigs ya up somethin' fierce—leaves ya weak as a kitten for days after. But it's the best rush ever. Like a good boff. Just leaves ya wantin' more."

"Did you know it was a living creature?"

The troll shook his large head. "Not until it flat-lined Punk and Mick. That's when Alishia took a peek at it in the astral and started screamin'. When it latched onto her, I decided to cap it. She's nowhere near as chill as those two, and it would'a done her for sure."

The girl ganger shot the troll a look. "So Halo really is a para? This guy's not scammin'?"

"Guess so," the troll said.

My mind was still trying to process what I'd just learned. The tentacled horror that had killed three people in the North End parking garage was being sold on the streets as a drug. Somebody had found a way to sustain corpselights in a city environment, and was selling a new high: the deadly rush of ecstasy that a corpselight used to subdue the victims whose life essence it fed upon.

It looked as if Drug Enforcement had a claim to the case, after all.

"Where'd you score the Halo?" I asked.

That got me a look. I could see the troll debating whether or not to tell me. Ratting out your dealer is an excellent way of getting iced. But that dealer was responsible for the death of the troll's girlfriend...

"Ya gotta know a shaman or mage to use Halo," he stalled.

"How come?"

"Ya need magic ta use it."

"I don't want to use it," I reminded him. "I want to talk to the friggers who're dealing it. I want to capture one of these corpselights."

The troll paused, but I could tell by his body language that he was going to give me what I wanted. He still craved the "drug" Halo—that much was clear. But the craving was stirring up a fear that I could read in his troubled eyes as easy as I could read a marquee.

"Try the Old Burial Grounds," he said. "Ask for Wowkwis."

It was an unusual name. Mi'kmaq Indian, by the sound of it.

"Thanks," I said.

The wide-eyed girl ganger had already lost interest in me and was climbing back up on the rope. She disappeared into the tree house above.

I gave Stud a look. "It'll be payback for Alishia," I told him.

"Yeah," he muttered as he turned away. "Sure." I could see that he didn't really believe me. He figured the corpselight would ice me, too.

I bared my teeth at any gangers who might still be sitting in the branches above, then loped out of the park.

5

The Old Burial Grounds are in the oldest part of the city. They might have had a proper name once, but that's the name everyone uses now. Some of the graves go back to the late 1700s, just after Halifax was founded.

I walked along Spring Garden Road until I came to the cemetery, which is about a meter higher than the street. The burial grounds are a block square, and are surrounded by a high wrought-iron fence topped with ornate spikes. The main entrance is on Barrington, but the gate there is rusted shut. The graves are so old that nobody comes to visit them anymore, and the gate hadn't been opened in a century or more.

The cemetery is one part of the city that's always deserted at night. It had a reputation of being haunted all along, but only after the Awakening of 2011, when magic returned to the world, did those stories prove true. The ghosts that manifested in the graveyard packed a one-two punch against those who intruded on their final resting place, first paralyzing with their chilling touch and then filling their victims with a magical fear. More than one fresh corpse, dead of a heart attack or stroke, had been found in the Old Burial Grounds when dawn broke.

I climbed up and over the wrought iron fence, thanking the spirits that I wasn't allergic to iron, then leaped down inside the grounds. The huge oak trees inside the cemetery sighed and rustled overhead—a quiet contrast to the bedlam of the Public Gardens.

I walked through a grim forest of leaning headstones and larger, more ornate monuments topped with cherubs. There were also a number of slate grave markers, but their inscriptions were long gone; the outermost layers of slate had sloughed off like dead skin, centuries ago. The place seemed to have the reek of death, but it was probably just my imagination. When I took a good sniff, all I could smell was tree sap and the rich loam of well-fertilized soil.

I didn't see any sign of a drug dealer, and was starting to think Stud had given me a false lead. I couldn't see anyone else moving around in the cemetery, and there didn't seem to be any of the markers dealers leave to clue buyers in to the stashes they've left behind for them.

Then I saw the fresh flowers. They were sitting in a cut-glass vase that looked as if it had been made more than a century ago, but which was clean and filled with fresh water. The vase held a spray of pink roses and was sitting on the ground in front of a granite headstone. The flowers were still fresh; I could smell their perfume. The name chiselled into the mottled gray tombstone was no longer legible, but I could just make out the latter part of the date. Whoever was buried here had died in the 1870s.

I heard a faint
click
and looked up. A few meters away, a woman was seated on a bench under an oak tree, facing me. She was sitting completely still and was downwind of me, which was why I hadn't noticed her earlier. Her hands were in her lap, holding something, and she was looking down at it. I changed my position so she was silhouetted by the lights in the street behind her, trying to get a better look ...

"Jane!" I exclaimed.

She looked up. From her startled expression, I could tell she didn't recognize me. I moved into the light.

"Who are you?" she asked.

For just a moment, I thought I had the wrong woman. But it was my Jane Doe all right. I'd know those eyes anywhere.

"It's me, Romulus," I said. "Remember? We met on Georges Island and you came back to the police station with me in a hover."

"We have never met before," she said in a voice as certain as death.

"We have," I assured her. "You just don't remember. Your memory is ... damaged."

She raised the object she held in her hands: the necklace. Silver glinted at her throat as she fastened it behind her neck.

"Why are you here, Jane?" I asked.

"I came here to meet...." Her voice trailed off, uncertain.

My hackles rose. Had Jane come here to meet a Halo dealer? Was it a corpselight that had frigged up her memory? But that didn't make sense; the troll seemed to have retained all of his mental faculties after "using" Halo. And Jane didn't have the yearning, fearful look I'd seen in the troll's eyes.

"I gave you the address of the Barrington Shelter this morning?" I said to her. "Did you go there?"

"I don't know. I woke up, and ... started walking around the city. I came here to visit my daughter."

I looked around the graveyard. "Here? At night?"

She pointed at the grave with the fresh flowers. "Matilda is buried just over there."

The idea that Jane could be the mother of someone who died nearly two centuries ago sent a shiver down my spine. Then I shook off the notion. It was impossible. Jane was suffering from amnesia, and, judging from that outburst in the hospital, possibly also a multiple-personality disorder. Spirits only knew what other mental illnesses she had. She was obviously delusional if she believed that the moldering bones that lay in the ground a few meters away were those of her daughter.

Wasn't she?

Jane unfastened the necklace and held it out toward me. "Look inside the locket," she said. "There's a picture of her there."

I wasn't about to touch anything silver. "You open it for me," I said.

She frowned, but did as I said.

"Hold it out so I can see it."

She undid the necklace and held it out for me.

I bent closer. Inside the locket was a tiny two-dimensional image, rendered in brown-black tones on a flat sheet of metal. It showed a middle-aged human woman. The portrait was faded, the image ghostly, but I could still make out the woman's image. Her hair was long, tied back in a bow. Her dress had a full skirt and white lace collar. It hung to her ankles, covering most of her button-up black boots.