Vengeance (9 page)

In the meantime, he just had to be patient. So while the years crawled by, every night he kept his lonely vigil by the window. Amid the mellow warmth of summer, through the crackling violence of early autumn thunderstorms, the bitter nights of winter, and among the snow; through the frost in the last long nights before spring returned. Every night, until the lights went out in the window behind him and O'Malley retired to his solitary sleep.

Then the pathetic figure would walk slowly away in the darkness. “Tomorrow night she'll come. Tomorrow night at seven. Maybe she stayed away on purpose, just to keep me on my toes. You never know when a girl'll tease you.” The shuffling footfalls died away, the figure lost itself in the gloom, on its way around to the back. The mind searching for equilibrium, functioning, barely, in a way.

O'Malley looked out of his shop window, saw the rag-clad creature called Meph pacing around and around in circles, his little carry bag slung over his shoulder. O'Malley knew little about the creature. The tramp had shouted “Meph,” when asked his name. But O'Malley was the only man in San Clemente who knew enough magic to recognise Meph's green eyes as symptoms of Raindrop. The drug took its name from the sensation addicts sometimes felt, as if big fat rain droplets were striking their skin. O'Malley knew the tramp's shouted, “Meph,” had probably had no connection with the question. Raindroppers, particularly those who used it so heavily it discoloured their eyes, lived in a different time frame than the world around them. Once O'Malley had wondered where Meph got his supply. Now he longer cared.

The world turned, as it does. People moved on, through, away. More and more it was strangers who passed him by. Soon few knew why he stood there. No one cared, much. It's just one more life, and the world's so full of lives. Gabriel changed his job. The orchard's owner grew tired of him scaring people with his empty eyes and fixed grin; they wouldn't have him there anymore. So he moved on to manual work down at the packing plant, where most of his colleagues were zombies or hardbitten types who didn't scare easily.

Before that, a few girls were interested, but the memory of Rosina eclipsed them all. Some of the other guys occasionally invited him out. “Time to forget her, Gabriel,” they said. He had few friends, and the invitations soon dried up. He hadn't needed friends when Rosie was there to fill his every waking moment.

Eventually, even Uncle Dez began to feel uneasy around him, closing before seven to make sure he didn't run into him. There'd been more and more awkward pauses. “Like a toy puppy,” O'Malley once described him. But this puppy was defective, its fixed grin never varying. Occasionally they tried to go beyond small talk, for even without Rosie, they'd always got along, been close to being friends once. But every way they tried to approach a conversation, they ran into Rosie, the fact of her absence.

O'Malley knew Gabriel climbed over the wall, but as long as he was quiet, he tolerated it for old time's sake. When Jasper contracted the green fire, and the offworld plague took his life with almost indecent haste, O'Malley brought his son's body home to join the others in the back room, and Gabriel's visits seemed less important.

Almost a full set now
, O'Malley thought. He quashed it, for it led where he didn't want to go; where, if he weren't careful, he'd end up as bad as Gabriel. The thought made him even more uncomfortable. Instead he took to drinking heavily, more than at any time since he'd been young and wild.

Gabriel continued his vigil in front of The Magic Emporium. In time he became a landmark, a flesh and blood fixture. Every night he waited until eleven when his familiar, restored to working order, told him the time, and he would leave their meeting place and go to see Sleeping Beauty.

Until the night something, a noise, disturbed Uncle Dez. He looked out to see a shadow by the fence. Because he was still in the twilit borderland between dream and reality, and the fortified wine still warmed his blood, he panicked, forgetting about Gabriel's nocturnal visits.

He fell out the back door brandishing an antique gun that would've probably killed him with the backblast, stopping dead when he saw Gabriel by the window. “Damn it, Gabriel, it's late!” he snapped.

"I just wanted to see if Rosie had woken up.” Gabriel was still sweet, lost Gabriel, the same as any other day.

O'Malley was tired, he hurt, and now this big lump had dragged him back to reality. The day had been hot and long; his leg was giving him trouble; he'd had a few drinks. It was the anniversary of Shalleen's death, and that was probably what finally made him lose his temper. “Gabriel, I've had enough!” he shouted. “You're here every night, and it's driving me mad!"

"I'm waiting for Rosie,” Gabriel said mulishly.

"Rosie's dead, Gabriel,” O'Malley said. “She's lying there in the bier, but that's only a shell. She's as dead as can be."

Gabriel flung up his hands and covered his ears.

O'Malley prised his hands away. “She's never going to walk, talk, or smile again. Even if I could bring her back—and I don't have the spells—she wouldn't be the same. Get it into that thick skull of yours.” He poked him in the chest with each word. “She. Is. Dead. You hear? She. Is. Dead."

A spark that had lingered in Gabriel's eyes died. He stood seemingly catatonic. O'Malley walked him through the house and the shop, watched him shuffle up the street, watched without showing any of the churning emotions within him until Gabriel was out of sight.

From that night onward, Gabriel changed. He still stopped by the shop irregularly, though he never bought anything, just said, “Hello,” smiled, and walked away. Sometimes he broke out in a sweat, even when it wasn't hot, or twitched. But he was always dead behind the eyes.

Gabriel had seen Meph around, but they'd never spoken. They had no reason to. Until the day when Meph stood in front of Gabriel, blocking his path, moving from side to side in a mirror image of Gabriel's movements.

"Gabe,” his familiar said. “His familiar's talking to me—"

"Hello, Gabriel,” another voice said. “Don't shut your familiar off. Not if you want to see Rosie again."

Gabriel stood rooted to the spot, watching the other man staring around him as if he wasn't there. There was a quivering eagerness about Meph, and he sweated as if he was making a colossal effort.

"I'm recording this while I'm still fairly lucid. The alien who gave me this drug tells me it'll be one of my last lucid times for a while. I'm starting to see it, Gabriel, as I record this. The future, that is. Scrolling out in front of me, as if I were remembering the past, only this is the future I can see. I can get Rosina back for you Gabe, if you want. But you must do something for me in return."

Everyone knows everyone else in a small town. Gabriel knew people who could supply a few basic potions, to pick you up or knock you down, depending on your need. Or a personal hex, just as likely to backfire, leaving the user blasted or blighted. Basic stuff. They were all amateurs who tolerated Gabriel, whereas they'd never do any favours for Meph. They also knew others. Those who knew someone in the New Quelforn Arcology, and from there, that chain of people who knew others stretched across the whole world.

It was easy enough to ask that someone if they could get magic spells, not the hick kind, but the big city stuff; invisibility and reanimation spells, and to distract any suspicions, to say he was asking on O'Malley's behalf. How he used to be into all that stuff, and now that the family was gone, he wanted to resume his acquaintance. You know how these old guys are.

O'Malley had muttered about the old days but only in the way people do who've outlived everyone they cared for, those for whom the past is kinder than the present. There had been nothing significant about his ramblings, no intent.

The someone who Gabriel knew went away with no idea of what was really going on. It took time of course. All through the summer and into winter, Gabriel waited. Like a stone cast into a pond, the question spread ripples. And in the way that sometimes happens, the ripples from the question intersected with another set of ripples spreading from elsewhere, and for some the world changed forever.

After that year's festival of Shamsharra, O'Malley seemed more his old self. Not quite as happy as before, but not quite so sick of the world, though his was gallows humour, grim and tinged with despair. He even gave a few coins to Meph. “Go get something to eat."

Gabriel was the only person up late enough to see the man call on O'Malley, when most people in San Clemente were tucked up in bed. The man stayed for a long time. When he went, he looked around carefully. Gabriel wished he'd been able to get a better look at the visitor, but he'd had to step back to avoid being seen himself.

Next morning O'Malley seemed bemused. Gabriel spoke to him briefly, but didn't linger, in case O'Malley wondered at his sudden interest. After sundown he called by again. He didn't mention Rosie, but talked of inconsequential things, the weather, how quiet the town was, and so on.

O'Malley wondered at Gabriel's sudden sociability, but was secretly pleased. Time healed everything, he told himself.

Over the next few days, perhaps as a consequence of the ripples spreading around the world, strangers appeared in town. Why they came, Gabriel neither knew nor cared. He only called when it was quiet, steering the conversation onto the old days, before the deaths. Back beyond that, to O'Malley's youth. Inevitably, the conversation strayed toward magic, the uses of it and different kinds of spells. O'Malley knew enough for Gabriel, even with his distraction-borne courage, to fear the consequences of Meph's plan. By coincidence—it seemed—O'Malley had resumed acquaintance with magic far beyond the thought of most in San Clemente. Or perhaps Meph, with his knowledge of the future, knew why and had tied their plans to the timing of O'Malley's revived interest.

The next night Gabriel called again. He watched, in the silences in their conversation, O'Malley smiling into space. O'Malley roused himself with a visible effort. “It's good to see you starting to come back to us, Gabriel,” he said.

The next night, O'Malley invited Gabe to stay awhile. He didn't seem to notice Meph hanging around outside, and as far as Gabriel was aware, he'd never seen the infrequent meetings between Gabe and Meph. When O'Malley left the room, Gabriel seized his chance and slipped a powder into his drink.

O'Malley awoke with a thick head, swearing he'd lay off the drink. The moon was full that night, and its bright light cast long shadows into corners. He remembered that he'd only had a couple of glasses with Gabriel. When he moved, he had to fight nausea but pressed on. He felt as if he had a fever, and his stomach threatened to explode, but he made it to the bathroom before being violently sick. He wiped his face and went in search of Gabriel.

Even before he reached the conservatory, he knew her body would be gone. He checked a drawer in the shop; so were the spells. As he made to leave the shop, there was a crackle and an immense voice boomed out behind him: “Go now, while you still can! Assassins have been sent to kill you! You have been warned!” The melodrama ended as abruptly as it began. He checked the message. It was audio only, so there was no clue from any visual.

A shabby room in a small house: the woodwork, once painted white, stained by time an ugly shade of dark grey. Blistered wallpaper where air had sneaked between paper and plaster, with faded red roses blotching it. A dim light on one of the walls provided feeble illumination.

A young man sat by one of several boxes. They contained the bodies of a young girl, an older woman, and a young man.

Another man stood hunched over the boxes. He was dirty and decrepit, and his hunchbacked body shook as if palsied. Then he stood upright, and with shaking hands, undid the clothes he wore. His shirt fell away, and Meph stretched the wings that unfurled, as wide as he was tall.

He bent over the box. Working quickly, he drained the blood from the girl's body, replacing it with fresh blood laced with the reanimation spell. He worked as if the body was a piece of meat, as if he was carving a steak. The transfusion worked quickly, the life-giving blood coursing through the veins, the tiny mites firing up muscles and nerves and ganglions long disused. There was a twitch from one arm. A spasm crossed her face. Her eyelids fluttered.

Meph turned, and his familiar said, “It's done, Gabe. I need to rest now. Wait a little while, and you'll have Rosina back.” Then he turned, a blood-spattered angel, his wings working, and slipped into the night.

Gabriel sat waiting, playing with the objects he held. A noise made him look up, and he smiled. “Hello, Uncle Dez."

"I must have been out for quite some time,” the older man said wearily. On the way there, he'd thought about blasting the little shit into his constituent atoms. Now his rage had oozed away, leaving only emptiness. “Give me a hand to get her home, before she deteriorates."

"It took me ages,” Gabriel said, “but I had to get Rosie back."

O'Malley stared at him. “Back?” he echoed.

Gabriel held up O'Malley's spells. “Back to life. You told me she was dead. There are spells to return dead people to life. You have one here, don't you?” He smiled, a child caught doing something he shouldn't.

O'Malley thought that that was what he was, just a child.
Maybe the strain did it,
he thought. Then O'Malley noticed the detritus he'd overlooked scattered by the coffin in the gloom. He crossed to the bier and looked with wide-eyed horror at the blood-spattered body in it. He turned to Gabriel and whispered, harshly, “You fool.” He almost unleashed a thunderbolt at Gabriel, but his fury passed, and as he grew calmer, he knew he wouldn't do anything. With the unpredictable fallout from the spells Gabriel held, innocents in the houses nearby would be as jeopardised by the blast as they were, and he simply didn't hold human life cheap enough. It was why he'd never succeeded as a mage, he knew. “You can't be sober,” he pleaded. “Tell me it's just a joke.” He added, “Oh Gabriel! Don't you think if I could have brought her back I would have? You think I want her dead?"