Undead to the World (28 page)

Pete doesn’t say anything. He just stares.

We make it down to the floor. The lems stare at me with curious eyes, then quickly
look away.

“No!” I scream. “No, you can’t let him do this! He’ll kill me!
He’ll kill me!
”

“Ssshh,” the Gray Wolf says. “Everything’s fine. Everything’s going to be
okay.
”

“He won’t let me go!
He told me your real name, you bastard!
”

And then he drags me through the door and out into the alley.

That’s where the memory ends.

EIGHTEEN

Now that I’ve done this a few times, I come back to myself fairly quickly. My eyes
snap open and I check to see if the rest of the plan is working.

Athena Shaker lies in the middle of the floor, wrapped in chains; her eyelids flutter
as her own consciousness returns. Charlie stands over her, his arms crossed, looking
pensive. I turn my head to the side and see Doctor Pete, already awake but looking
groggy. But is it really him?

“What was—what was that?” Athena says. “I thought you were going to … what’s going
on?”

I shake my head, trying to clear the last of the muzziness out of it. “What’s going
on is the old switcheroo, Athena. I took a chance that the alpha werewolf wouldn’t
be able to resist discovering the identity of the master vampire, and you went for
it. We both got sucked into the memory sequence, and Charlie wrapped you in a few
dozen feet of tow-chain while you were drooling on the carpet. Didn’t want you to
wolf out and gut us as soon as you woke up and discovered you’d been suckered.”

She glares at me from the floor. “You’re making a mistake. I’m not—”

“You
are.
But you know who isn’t? This guy.” I aim a thumb beside me. “Sometimes a good old-fashioned
lie works just as well as an illusion spell. We used Terrance to fake you out and
throw you off balance. It’s the kind of thing he’s good at.”

Terrance—or maybe someone else—gives me a look of consternation. “Jace? Damn, this
is messed up.…”

“Let me clarify things for you,” I say. “Doctor Pete was shacked up with the alpha
werewolf, who was using him to infect the townspeople with her own blood via phony
innoculations. She may look like a petite redhead, but that’s more illusion magic;
you just can’t trust appearances in this town. I even briefly considered that she
might be a he, but the local transvestite is the wrong shade—the alpha wolf is not
only tall, she’s black. Her real name is Catherine Shaka, AKA the African Queen.”

She doesn’t bother to deny it. “I
knew
he smelled wrong,” she growls. “I should have killed all three of you the second
you walked through the door.”

“The woman I knew wouldn’t do that,” I say. “Not without a good reason, anyway. After
Longinus snatched you, he must have tampered with your memory. What do you remember?”

“I had returned to my homeland, traveling in secret, to meet with a shaman who said
he could return my throne to me. He told me of you, and what you had done to my people,
and where you were hiding. Then he brought me here.” Her tone is savage. “This place
of evil will be redeemed through your suffering. My bloodline will spread throughout
the population, giving birth to a world of foot soldiers. Then we will return to my
country to reclaim it.”

I sigh. More wrongheaded, hate-filled propaganda—but this time, it hasn’t been pumped
into the brain of some hapless alternate-world civilian. This is the genuine article,
a royal woman warrior I’ve fought alongside—and she is
not
someone I want as an enemy. Even without the ability to turn into a nine-foot-tall
hairy monster, the African Queen is a legendary heroine, one whose fighting prowess,
battlefield experience, and skill with a bow make her lethal at any distance.

“You’ve been brainwashed,” I tell her bluntly. “With powerful sorcery that’s slowly
eroding. You’re one of the most single-minded people I’ve ever met; if anyone can
beat a spell into submission through sheer willpower, it’s you—”

“Excuse the hell outta
me,
” Terrance interrupts, “but I’m still a little confused. I seem to remember something
about being in a jail cell, but there was this little blonde in there with me. Only
I
also
remember being in a cell—a
different
cell—all by myself. And then there’s
her.
” He points to Shaka’s bound body and shakes his head. “I kind of remember being
with
her, you know? And giving shots to people. Was that me?”

I study him carefully. “On Thropirelem, Azura’s a damn fine illusionist herself. She
used her abilities to infiltrate the federal prison where you were locked up, then
convinced you to help us. That is, she convinced
Tair
to help us.” What I don’t tell him is that because more than one mind was involved,
there’s a possibility that either persona could surface, or parts of both—leading
to a confusing mix of memories in Terrance’s head.

He frowns at me. “I … I don’t think my name is Tair. That doesn’t
feel
right.”

I grin. “Maybe not,” I say. “And that’s fine by me.”

I turn back to Shaka. “How about you, Catherine? You feel any more like yourself,
or do you still think I’m the Antichrist?”

Her response is to bare her teeth, which are a lot longer and sharper than they were
a minute ago. Her auburn hair darkens, and coarse, jet-black fur sprouts from every
inch of her skin as her frame reshapes and contorts. Her eyes glow bright yellow;
her fingernails lengthen and curve into razored weapons. She’s hoping to burst her
bonds through brute, physical-law-defying force as her mass increases and her body
expands.

All I can do is stare. I have one of those moments of sudden clarity brought on by
intense emotion—in this case, terror—as the real, true horror of what Ahaseurus planned
for me becomes evident. The snarling monster straining at her chains in front of me
is exactly one-half of a pitiless equation, the other half being her vampire equivalent.
Together, they spell the inevitable, bloody demise of every human being sharing this
particular version of Earth; those who aren’t turned into creatures like this will
become food, slaves, or both.

And all of it will be my fault.

The chains hold. She howls and writhes and bucks, but we keep well away from both
claws and jaws. I try to communicate with her using thrope sign language—it’s how
beings with a muzzle for a mouth communicate—but she doesn’t seem to understand me.
In the end, we grab a dangling length of chain and drag her into the garage, where
the trunk of her late-model sedan is just big enough to cram her into. It’s like wrestling
a grizzly with rabies—I may be immune to scratches, but one bite and it’s Full-Moon
City, final stop on the Fur-Ball Express.

She keeps hammering away on the inside of the trunk, but I’m not too worried; as long
as the chains hold she’s not going anywhere. One monster down, two to go.

“Pretty worked up, isn’t she?” Terrance says.

“It’s this place,” I say. “Or maybe this world. Pires and thropes aren’t the same,
here. They’re—more
basic
, somehow. Wilder. Less evolved, maybe—”

“Nah,” says Charlie. He’s inspecting a row of tools on the garage wall. “That ain’t
it. You don’t want to say it, but you know exactly which word to use.”

“Primitive?”

“
Evil.
” He picks up a pair of gardening shears and studies the cutting edges critically.
“I can feel it, and so can you. They ain’t like the pires and thropes back home—these
are bad-to-the-bone
killers.
I don’t know why, and I don’t much care. They get in our way, they gotta go down
and never get back up.”

I want to argue. I want to tell him that these are—or were—ordinary people, before
Longinus got ahold of them. Maybe some of them could have made better choices in the
religion department, but none of them asked to be turned into bloodthirsty creatures
of the night.

But I don’t say a thing … because he’s right. I could hear it in Zhang’s hungry whisper
drifting out of the shadows; I could see it in Isamu’s cruel eyes. Even Neil, with
his soft-spoken musings on the tortures he planned to inflict, practically radiated
it: evil. The real thing, fully self-aware and predatory, utterly without mercy and
deriving immense satisfaction from the suffering of others. An implacable, elemental
force, indulging in destruction for destruction’s sake.

“Yeah, okay,” I say wearily. “They’re the bad guys. No problem. Never mind that some
of them look like people I care about, or remember chatting with in a supermarket
line, or maybe even got naked with. Nope. Just line ’em up and I’ll take ’em down.…”

We troop out of the garage and back into the house. We make it as far as the kitchen,
then collapse into chairs around the table. Terrance has been pretty quiet up until
now, no doubt trying to sort out the conflicting things his brain is telling him.
I haven’t had a chance to ask him about the memory he relived, and even with all the
other craziness he’s been thrown into, it must be eating at him.

“Hey,” I say. “You all right?”

He doesn’t look at me when he answers. “Getting there. I know what we have to do next.”

“Oh?”

“Go after the Gallowsman. He’s the key to all this.”

That’s more coherent than I was expecting, but good news; it means Terrance is adapting.
“You think?”

“Yeah. I—Terrance, I mean—was just screwing with you when he told you that story,
but you’re the one the Gallowsman is focusing on.”

Interesting; he seems to have the memories of Terrance, Tair,
and
Doctor Pete, or some combination thereof. “I thought it was supposed to possess the
body of a suicide and then target the ones who made the victim’s life miserable.”

“That’s what Terrance said, yeah. Because that’s what he was
told
to say.”

“By whom?”

“Whom do you think? His father. Mayor Leo knows all about the cult, though he isn’t
a member. That means he took orders from the
real
town leader—Longinus.”

“More smoke and mirrors,” Charlie grunts.

“So what’s the actual story?” I ask.

Terrance frowns. “The Gallowsman is some kind of bad luck and despair vacuum. Sucks
it up and hands it over to a specific target—in this case, you.”

I nod. “That much we know. And with me primed by your little urban legend, presumably
I was eventually supposed to go out to the woods to off myself in the hopes of a little
postmortem payback.”

It’s Charlie’s turn to frown. “But you aren’t supposed to
die
—just suffer, right?”

“Sure. Which means any attempt to kill myself wouldn’t work—Ahaseurus wouldn’t leave
an obvious escape clause like that in place. It’s just another way to demoralize me;
after all, once you’ve tried to kill yourself and failed, you’ve pretty much hit bottom.”

Unless, you know, you’re then responsible for the slaughter of your entire race. That
might just depress you a touch.

“Terrance doesn’t know a lot about the cult, but one of his friends does,” Terrance
says. “Zev. He’s the one who told Terrance about the tunnels.”

Zev? Now the name sounds familiar, in that double-resonance sort of way that means
I must have known him before Ahaseurus stuck me here. “So why does the local bad boy’s
sidekick know more about the town’s secret history than the mayor’s son?”

Terrance shrugs. “Same reason everything happens around here, probably; something
to do with you, and screwing with your head. But there are two facts I
am
sure of. The first is that the Gallowsman is at the center of this, magically speaking.
Eliminate him, and all the spells woven through this place fall apart.”

“And the second?”

“That Zev’s loyal to Terrance, and he’s the only one in town who knows about the tunnels
but isn’t a member of the cult. If I ask him to help, he will.”

I study Terrance’s face. What he’s saying rings true, but at this point I suspect
everyone and everything. “What’s the first thing you gave me when we met?”

He looks blank for a second, then smiles. “Oh. A mug of Urthbone tea, to help with
your Reality Dislocation Trauma. You wanted coffee, but I insisted you drink the tea
first.”

I sigh in relief. Doctor Pete seems to be the one in charge of the brain. “Okay. Well,
we should either go after the Gallowsman or the master vampire, and at least we know
where the Gallowsman is likely to be—plus, we have someone to play tour guide. If
you think Zev will go for that.”

“Oh, I think he will. In fact, I won’t take no for an answer.”

“Then let’s pay him a visit,” I say, getting to my feet. “And, Doctor Pete? Welcome
to the party.”

He hesitates, then gives me a smile in return.

“Terrific,” Charlie mutters as we head for the door. “For once, I was hoping we’d
get the ruthless killer instead of the medic. I just hope we don’t need him.…”

*   *   *

We take Athena Shaker’s car—with her still in the trunk—down a dirt track to a spot
just outside of town, where there’s a little wooden shack hidden by a stand of birch
trees between two wheat fields. I tried calling Alexis before we left, but got no
answer. That worries me, but I can’t waste time looking for her.

Doctor Pete informs us that this is where Terrance and his little gang like to hole
up and drink cheap beer when they can’t afford the Quarry. Zev’s inside—and he isn’t
alone.

I can hear the noises from inside the shack as we get out of the car. Neither of them
are exactly trying to be quiet, and I recognize Sally January’s voice almost immediately.

From the look on Doctor Pete’s face, so does he. “… the hell?” he mutters, strides
forward, and yanks the rickety wooden door open.

“Ah,” says Charlie as we follow. “The distinctive yet oddly disturbing sound of two
biological entities trying to smush themselves together to make a third. No wonder
it’s the inspiration for all the great art of the ages.”