The Nekropolis Archives (67 page)

  "The solution to all this seems simple enough to me," Shrike said. "You find yourself a good forensic sorcerer, someone skilled enough to use their magic to discover the identity of whoever hijacked your body. I mean, there have to be some magical traces of them clinging to your body, right? Then you…" He trailed off. "Never mind. It's a stupid idea. The bounty on your head is so large, any sorcerer you contact would likely just cast a stasis spell on you and hand you over to Quillion."

  "Yep," I said. "And because so many bounty hunters will be out looking for me, I can't consult my usual sources." Waldemar at the Great Library, Skully, Arvel the ghoul restaurant owner and a dozen lesser but still valuable contacts – all of them would be watched by Sentinels and bounty hunters alike. If I went anywhere near them, I'd be captured for sure.

  Thinking about bounty hunters reminded me about Overkill. Acantha hadn't been the only person I'd humiliated at Sinsation and – assuming she hadn't had anything to do with the theft of my body, something I hadn't entirely ruled out – she'd be after me like the rest of her mercenary minded brothers and sisters. If Acantha had taken great delight in delivering news of Quillion's reward, Overkill would be ecstatic at the thought of getting a rematch with me, especially one that held the extra incentive of such a large paycheck. She'd no doubt be disappointed by Quillion's desire I be delivered to him 'relatively intact', but for five hundred thousand darkgems I'm sure she'd find a way to live with it.

  Given the seriousness of my dilemma I would've considered asking Varvara for help. The Demon Queen isn't exactly a friend of mine but she finds me amusing, which is more valuable in her mind than friendship anyway. She's been something of a patroness to me since I arrived in Nekropolis, but even so, I'm careful not to ask too many favors of her. It's never a good idea to become too indebted to a demon, let alone their queen. But I wouldn't get a chance to appeal to Varvara's generosity this time. If what Quillion had told me was true, Varvara – like the other four Darklords – was still sleeping, recharging her energy after the last Renewal Ceremony. So no help there.

  I was starting to feel hopeless and Devona, likely sensing my emotions through our psychic link, reached over and gave my arm a squeeze. "You're a detective, Matt, and a damned good one. You'll figure something out."

  "I wish I shared your confidence in me." Truth was I relied on my network of contacts far more than I liked to admit, even to myself. Without them I wasn't sure I'd be able to discover the identity of the thief who'd stolen Edrigu's bone flute and framed me for the crime – not with the entire city out hunting for me, that is.

  I was so stuck on where to turn for help that I considered trying to contact the Dominari, but I didn't consider it for very long. For one thing I wanted as little to do with the mobsters as possible, and for another I didn't want to think about what sort of price they might charge for their assistance this time. But in the end the reason I decided against contacting the Dominari was a purely practical one: they'd be just as likely to want to collect the bounty on me as anyone else in the city. As I'd learned from Gnasher the Dominari was nothing if not all business and five hundred thousand darkgems would make a nice profit for simply – pardon the expression – ratting me out to Quillion.

  What I needed was someone who not only was tuned in to what was happening in Nekropolis on a daily basis but who wasn't someone I consulted very often. Someone who kept a low profile – so low that no one would even realize he was an information source.

  Then it came to me and a slow grin spread across my face. Maybe – just maybe – I wasn't beaten yet.

  I grabbed Shrike's hand and gave it a quick shake.

  "Thanks again for everything, but Devona and I have to get moving."

  "You've got an idea," Devona said with a smile. It wasn't a question and she didn't seem surprised in the least. Is it any wonder I love her?

  "I do. I think it's time we paid a visit to the House of Mysterious Secrets."

"This is some kind of joke, right?"

  Devona stood on the sidewalk, hands on her hips, head cocked at an appraising angle. I stood next to her, hands in the pockets of my new (Bogdan's old) coat. When Devona had procured my disguise she'd had no idea what crime I'd been arrested for, so she hadn't brought me any gloves. But since Edrigu's mark on my hand was what we used to call a 'distinguishing feature' back when I was a cop, I figured I should keep that hand concealed as often as possible.

  We stood outside a large manor house surrounded by a high wrought iron fence with nasty looking spikes on the tips of the bars. We were still in the Sprawl, not far from the Grotesquerie, and the gamey smell of zoo animals hung thick in the air. I could tell because Devona kept wrinkling her nose.

  The manor was constructed entirely out of black wood and brick and its grounds were overgrown with weeds and decorative shrubs that had long ago been left to grow wild. The shutters – black, of course – hung askew on their hinges, the windows were dirt-smeared and cracked and the entire structure listed slightly to the right, as if the manor were perpetually on the verge of collapse. Ravens perched everywhere – on the chimney, the roof, the fence… twenty-nine at my count. A low lying fog-like mist clung to the ground, the whitish vapors roiling slowly as if they possessed some sort of sinister life.

  "The only thing missing is a miniature storm cloud hanging overhead discharging the occasional lightning bolt," Devona added. "It's the stereotypical haunted house. It's more than a cliché – it's a cliché of a cliché!"

  "That's the whole point," I said. "In Nekropolis a place like this is as unremarkable as a ranch house in a suburban neighborhood back on Earth. It's the perfect disguise."

  "Disguise for what?" Devona asked suspiciously.

  I just smiled. "You'll see."

  I walked up to the main gate. It wasn't locked and it swung open easily at my touch. But even though the gate's motion was as smooth as if it had just been oiled, a creaking groan that sounded almost human filled the air. Once the gate was all open I turned to Devona and gave her a courtly bow, or at least a reasonable version thereof.

  "After you, milady."

  Devona gave me a look that said she wasn't in the mood to play and walked through. I followed and the gate swung shut behind us of its own accord. Devona didn't even bother looking back over her shoulder at it.

  "Cute," she said sarcastically.

  We disturbed the layer of ground mist as we walked, but it closed right up behind us, leaving no evidence of our passage. We found the front walk by accident more than anything else and we continued along it until we reached the porch. The ravens roosting on the property made no sound as we approached, but they kept their beady-eyed gazes upon us as if they were trying to determine whether we were up to no good.

  A quartet of cracked stone columns held up the roof over the porch and spiders had spun elaborate webs between them. Something was caught in one of the webs and I took a closer look.

  "Help meeeeeee!" came a tiny voice.

  I reached out and with a thumb and forefinger carefully plucked the human headed fly from the webbing.

  "Get on back to the Foundry, you slacker," I said.

  I flicked the human headed fly off my fingers and his wings began to buzz. He circled our heads a couple times before straightening his course and making a beeline – or rather a flyline – in the general direction of the Boneyard.

  "A little guy like that needs to be extra careful when he decides to take a flight on the wild side," I said.

  I stepped up to the large front door – black, naturally – took hold of the thick iron ring knocker, lifted it, and let it fall once, twice, three times, then I stepped back to wait.

  "Let me guess," Devona said. "The door will creak open and a scary-looking butler will poke his head out and say, 'Good evehu-ning' in a sepulchral tone."

  "Exactly what does a sepulchral tone sound like anyway?" I asked.

  The door opened then, and true to Devona's guess, it did so with a creaking sound. But instead of a scary butler an ordinary human man stood there. He was tall, in his early to mid-thirties, with a round face, thinning straight black hair, glasses and a neatly trimmed black mustache. He wore a navy-blue polo shirt, jeans and running shoes.

  "Can I help you?" he said, speaking in a pleasant deep voice that was sonorous rather than sepulchral. He paused, frowned as he gave me a closer look, then he smiled.

  "Matt!" I didn't recognize you in your new get-up." He turned to Devona. "And you must be Devona." His frown returned. "Funny, I thought you had blonde hair."

  "She normally does," I said. "We're traveling in disguise right now."

  The man nodded. "Of course. I should've realized." He opened the door wider and stepped back. "Come on in. My House of Mysterious Secrets is your House of Mysterious Secrets."

  He smiled as his joke while Devona and I walked past him. Once we were inside he closed the door and entered a code on an electronic keypad on the wall next to it. There was the sound of locks engaging and I knew the manor's impressive security system was now activated.

  Devona had of course seen the keypad and had no doubt noticed how out of place it was with the manor's outside appearance. But that was nothing compared to the place's inside. We now stood within a pleasant looking foyer more suited to an upper middle class house on Earth than a haunted mansion in Nekropolis.

  Devona turned to me with a questioning look.

  "Allow me to introduce you to the master of this forbidding edifice," I said. "The enigmatic and eldritch being known only by the sinister appellation of…
David Zelasco
!"

  David gave Devona a smile.

  "Hi."

David led us through his tastefully furnished home to a workroom toward the back of the manor. It was a large room with long tables lining the walls, a dozen computer monitors with keyboards resting on top of them. With the exception of a half empty liter bottle of soda and a crinkled bag of nacho chips near one of the monitors, the tables were clear and free of clutter. It looked like a normal enough office space, except each of the monitors had a raven perching on top of it, the birds standing motionless, connected to the monitors by wires plugged into the backs of their heads. Images flashed across the monitor screens in fastmotion, scenes from all five of Nekropolis's Dominions.

  A wheeled office chair sat in front of one of the monitors and David went over to it and sat down.

  Devona stepped closer to one of the ravens and examined it more closely. "These things are some kind of machines, aren't they? And I bet the ones outside are too."

  David nodded as he turned the chair around to face us and sat down. "They're partially robotic. They were specially designed for me by–"

  Devona held up a hand to stop him. "Victor Baron, right?"

  David smiled. "Who else? I've got about a hundred or so working at any given time. They fly all over the city, recording video and audio. When their memories are full, they fly back here and I download the information they've gathered into my mainframe. That's when the real work starts."

  Devona reached out a finger to prod one of the ravens. The bird gave her an angry squawk, startling her. It seemed to glare at her, as if to say,
Do you mind
? and then became motionless again.

  Devona turned to face David.

  "Real work?"

  He nodded again. "I go through the hours of video my ravens collect, looking for something useful."

  Devona gave me a mildly frustrated look which I interpreted as meaning
Would somebody just tell me what's going on here
?

  But before I could say anything, an electronic tone sounded from the monitor closest to him.

  "Excuse me for a moment."

  David swiveled around to face the monitor and typed a few strokes on the keyboard. The video download on the screen paused, David minimized it and brought up a new window. This one showed a man in his early sixties with straight black hair, glasses and a friendly looking if somewhat long and rectangular face. The display showed him from the mid-chest up, revealing that he was wearing a black Ramones T-shirt. When the man spoke, he did so in a mild New England accent.

  "Hey, David, how you doing? My publisher's breathing down my neck about the new book and I need something to send him real soon. You got anything good for me?"

  "I've put together a few things for you, Steve. I'll email them to you right now."

  David typed a few more keystrokes and hit SEND. A couple of seconds passed and then the man on the other end – who obviously was sitting in front of his own computer – said, "Got it! Thanks, David!"

  "No problem. Take a look at the files and see if anything strikes you as interesting. If not let me know and I'll see what else I can dig up for you."

  "You got it. Thanks again, man. From now on I'm going to start calling you Wint-o-green, because you're a lifesaver!"

  The display went black as the man disconnected, and with a few more keystrokes, David closed the video chat window and resumed downloading the raven's information.

  "That call," Devona said. "You have a direct connection with Earth?"

  "Not exactly," David said. "I have to go through Nekropolis's Aethernet to connect to Earth's Internet – which isn't as easy as it sounds. The first thing you have to do–"

  David's something of a techhead and I knew if I didn't cut him off right away we'd end up learning far more about Nekropolis – to Earth communication than we wanted to.

  "You've just witnessed David in action," I said. "Horror is a way of life here in Nekropolis but back on Earth it's big business. Books, movies, comics, video games… The people who create them all need ideas, and when they run out, they get in touch with David."

  Devona looked at the ravens with new understanding. "You go through all the video they collect, looking for ideas to pass on to your customers," she said to David.