Chasing the Dragon (31 page)

She got in the car without a word, and Malachi leaned back on the
old seats and spun them out into the growing warmth of midmorning
downtown. After the confines and events at the agency, driving down
the hills into the city's heart was like riding a slowly splurging river
into a land of calm, colour, and normality. Lila found herself leaning on
the door, hanging out of it, watching the people on the street as they
went about their business. She was almost used to the way they looked,
their peculiar clothing with its huge variety of anachronistic and outworld styles, the fact that everything on sale reflected a fascination with demons, fey, and elves yet she saw none of these on the street. It
was like a hobby, or a fetish for most, or maybe in her good moments
she thought it was the humans putting a toe in the water.

News scans flashed headlines at her, which she accepted only
because she saw the word "ghost" in the leaders. Journalists and photographers had found one of the wrecks and squeezed out some footage
past the agency suppression, or been allowed to leak it, she wasn't sure.

After "Mysterious wrecks pile up on South Bay Shores" it read
"Today the beaches of the South Bay area were visited by the unearthly
ships of yesteryear. Live-shot pictures of the doomed vessel show clearly
a glow (the images pulsed to show where) and identifying features of this
one-time legendary craft, The Golden Hind *link to more about the
Hind*. Outworld specialist groups claim this is just part of the
increasing invasion of Otopian space by manifestations from the Beyond
*link to claims* *link to manifestation* *link to Beyond*. Meanwhile
government officials deny there is any upsurge in the number of recorded
anomalies in the Bay area *link to govt statistics* and say there is
nothing unusual going on. Those of us who remember the Hunter's
Reign may like to consider otherwise *link to Hunter's Reign*.

Lila drilled out a few links and saw that the government was still
sticking to its rationalist materialist line, though this was creaky and
looked more like a matter of pride and determination than any scientific effort to achieve objective reality. She wondered how it had lasted
so long and asked Malachi.

"You are a species under siege," he said, as if it was old-hat. "Such
is what you do."

"Wasn't Faeryever invaded?"

"Not after the first few attempts," he said. "The demons and elves
skirmish with one another in times of great tedium. Incursions into
Faery are constant, but usually where people want to get a specific
thing or see a specific person."

"I guess you all defend yourselves with magic."

"We do. And don't forget, no faery would last long in Alfheim, not
awake. And no elf would enjoy a stay in Faery. The demons ... well,
you know them. It's best for all of us if we stay close to home."

"And what do we got? Nothing?"

His silence went on a touch too long. "You are sadly a very fit prey
and marketplace for all of us. In the old times you were protected by
your position-you were a dimensional remove from us and very hard
to connect with in any material way. The Bomb Event finished that,
and the Hunter's Reign proved to anyone who wanted it proved that
aetheric beings could flourish here without erosion, even if there was
nothing here of any useful power or interest." He cleared his throat and
took a ramp with rather abrupt speed. They started to cross the
Andalune Bridge's perfect span across the water to South Bay.

Lila sat up, "Hey, where are we going?"

"You'll see."

She frowned and sat back in the uncomfortable genuine upholstery of the seat. "So what is this ghost emergence? Are they just slow
to find us?"

"I think you'll get some answers where we're going."

She watched the city fall back in the rearview mirror. "So how
many other people have dead relatives phoning them?"

Malachi's hands tightened and then released the wheel. "Some," he
said. "Apparitions and hearing voices are up to twenty reports a day,
and that doesn't include the mentally disturbed. But they're ghosts. I
sent some people down there last night to your house. You don't have
that. In your office you got-"

"A zombie." She peered at him. "I got two zombies?"

"Looks maybe."

"Ugh!" She closed her eyes and concentrated on the feeling of her
hair being whipped by the wind coming over the shield. "It's because
of that damn pen."

"Yeah I'd have thought so."

"Shit." They came off the bridge and Malachi took the coast road.
"The ships are the same?" she asked.

"I think so," he said.

"Then, are they really, I mean ..."

"Just wait, Lila!"

She shut up and listened to the engine. At least this car had one.
"You need to get the timing sorted out."

"Yeah, I will."

"Okay." She waited for a few more turns and then looked at him
with disbelief as they braked and pulled left into the darkness of overhanging trees. "The Folly?"

"You wanted to see her. You get your wish."

"This is Azevedo's house? Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because you wouldn't have let her alone yesterday."

"What? I was the one who wanted to stay because she was upset."

"But she said to go. She didn't want you around. When she doesn't
want you, best not to stay, not if you want her help in the future. She
doesn't belong to us, Lila."

Lila fished around in the turmoil of her feelings, trying to find any that
would sit still long enough to form a reaction. The car wallowed through
the twists and turns of the driveway. Under the trees she saw the faces of
elementals forming and dissipating. "Since when am I the bad guy?"

"Are you?"

"What the hell is that supposed to mean? Why are you on my case
suddenly?"

Malachi thumped the steering wheel and they veered towards a
ditch. He got it back and turned them to face the brooding slump of
the house, then hit the brakes and pulled them up sharply. The engine
grumbled under the hood. "I wish you'd back off. Slow down. You've
killed two people in two days and you act like it was nothing. Where
is that coming from? Where inside you is not bothered by this anymore? Because I'm bothered by it."

She felt her nostrils flare, "Gee, I don't know, maybe I was traumatised by seeing my file with the words `Unpredictable OutcomesTerminate' written on it, or perhaps my morals got flushed down the
river of blood I had to endure in Demonia while I was doing the good
works of the day. Or maybe when homicidal lunatics come threatening
me I don't take it as well as I ought to. I mean, not like anyone tried
to kill me recently. How should I be taking it, Malachi? Tell me.
Because you were the one bitching at me to toughen up and fly right,
and now you're saying slow down and what? What am I supposed to
slow down for? So some bastard can catch me and blow me to bits?
Because every son of a bitch in at least one world wants to, probably
with good reason. And let's not forget the interference of your friendly
powers." She plucked at the cape. "But no, let's forget that and pretend
it's another day at the agency and we have all the time in the world."

He was gripping the wheel so hard he thought he was going to
break it. His claws had emerged and were cutting into the skin of his
palms. "I am out of my depth," he said after a moment had passed.
"No. I'm afraid. That's what." He made himself let go and massaged
his palms in an effort to get the tendons to relax so the claws would
recede. He showed her his hands, ugly and beastlike as they were. "I
don't like to be this. The planes seem to be tilting towards older times,
chaos. I liked order, and neatness and small stuff. I liked feeling in
charge and on the top of things. And you-you were easy to get along
with, you asked me for advice, you listened. I was something. I had a
purpose. I felt like I was in the right place. I didn't think it would end
so soon and become this ... war."

Lila rubbed her face. "It's not a war."

"Feels like one."

"It's not a war, but you don't get to boss me," she said. She reached
out and put her hand on his shoulder. "But you do get to tell me when
I'm going over the top."

"You're not," he said, mollified. He took out one of his handker chiefs and dabbed a spot of blood off his hand. "I want to lock you in
a vault and keep you out of trouble because your trouble is so big and
I don't want to lose you. Sorry."

"Hey." She leaned across and gave him a hug. It was awkward with
the gearshift between them but she made it. Tears threatened and she
had to fight to keep them down. The warmth and tenderness of the
moment felt like they were enough to undo all her efforts at selfcontrol. She had to pull back long before she wanted to. "It'll be all
right," she said with a confidence she didn't feel.

"Yeah," he said, released the brake, and let them roll up the last
hundred metres to the house. They parked and in the silence following
the engine's last note they listened to the sound of the gulls circling.

Malachi got out first and led the way. He didn't have to knock. The
door opened as he reached it, though it was hard to see inside because the
interior was unlit and the hall had no windows except a single skylight.

"Come in," said a woman's voice with a strong Latin accent.

Malachi thanked her quietly and moved forwards. Lila hesitated.
She remembered this door in a better state, just months ago in her
experience, when Zal had rented the house. Demon bodyguards had
stood outside it and his manager, the effervescent (not) Jolene, had
answered it. She could still see the woman striding over the black-andwhite marble floor, heels clacking, suit perfect, anxiety visible in every
tough and competent little movement she made as she pretended she
was fine with a massive demon drop-in party, catering for hundreds,
playing servant to the Queen of Pop, Sorcha the Scorcher, Zal's sister.
Where was Jolene? Was she even alive? Lila shivered. What would
Jolene have made of Zal's sudden disappearance? Lila didn't even know
what the papers had said in those days. She wasn't about to look now.

In those days Lila had thought Zal was just a jumped-up elf egoist,
Sorcha was ditto from the other side, and that her job as rock star's
minder would be mercifully soon over. She'd go back to the agency,
learn to live with some prosthetics, and keep an eye on her family from afar whilst doing good works probably somewhere not too far above
traffic duty for a year or two.

The hell with memories, she thought, and moved forwards into
the sepulchral gloom and damp of the hall. The building's familiar
sense of presence enveloped her. It seemed to have sunk farther into the
ground since she was last here, but the dirt on the skylights, the
growth of grass and weeds on the flat roofs, and the general dilapidation probably weren't helping. As she passed the threshold Lila looked
for their owner, curious to see who and what she'd noticed the day
before. She found herself face-to-face with a ghost.

No, she thought, a split second later as the woman's transparency
suddenly vanished to nothing, then flickered and was equally suddenly
whole and firmly three dimensional. Not a ghost. Something else.
Something she had no idea what, though her senses and Al had an
explanation at hand. Sancha Azevedo was phasing in and out of reality
at randomised intervals and incomplete sequences. She was occupying
their linear time sporadically. The only good part was that the intervals were so brief it was almost as if she were completely present.
Looking at her was like seeing a character in a rough animated cartoon
book being flicked through by a clumsy thumb.

When she was present enough to see, Azevedo was a short, thin
Latino woman of about forty-five with long black hair tied in a single
braid. She wore jeans, a T-shirt, and a long flowing over-robe in a fashionable ethnic print. She had beautiful handmade cowboy boots on
and surprisingly pale blue eyes. Those two things stuck in Lila's attention as she recovered from the initial shock of the meeting.

"Ms. Azevedo, this is Agent Black," Malachi said.

"I was expecting you. Call me Sancha," said the woman.

Lila was about to reply when a movement caught her eye. She
looked and saw, crossing the corridor, a thinner, more transparent version of Sancha Azevedo walking with a steaming drink in her hand. It
moved silently into a side room. She paused with her mouth open, greeting forgotten, her hand reaching for the other's hand to shake it.
She felt fingers close on her fingers and give a squeeze.

"Don't mind me," the half-fey said with evident pleasure at being
able to make the statement. "You'll see a lot of me. But this is the one
that does the talking right here."

"You're a walker," Lila said. "Like Jones."

"A strandloper, yes." The blue eyes sparkled with amusement at
Lila's discomfiture. "But not like Calliope. Now isn't that a strange
name to call a girl?"

"She was one of the Muses," Lila said, glad to find something to
say. "From the old Greek. Orpheus was her son."

"Is that right?" Sancha Azevedo looked pleased. "I thought it was
something to do with fairground music, you know, but at least that's
better." She closed the door after them and an automatic set of locks
bolted home, making a thudding noise like something heavy falling
down stairs.

"Expecting someone?" Malachi asked.

Azevedo made the kind of noncommittal shrug that said she was
and she wasn't. "This is an odd place full of odd things. I don't need
too much of that."

"But why did you come here?" Lila blurted, caught short in the act
of following the woman by another apparition of her which, seeing
none of them, moved quickly through and out the solid door.

"That was yesterday." She pointed down the long corridor that led
to most of the rest of the house directly from the front door. "Terribly
careless feng shui right here. If you don't come in, it'll be like downtown traffic lights at five-thirty." As if to prove her point there she was
again, more solid this time, but very sporadic. She appeared at a
sequence of points with pauses, in the hall, along the corridor, turning
into a room, her head bent over a book.