Darkwalker: A Tale of the Urban Shaman (43 page)

Ashes. All I could taste or sense was ashes. At the end of the hall, Nita Robles lay twisted at the juncture of wall and floor, service automatic loose in her hand, the slide locked open, which meant she had emptied the clip. A line of dark stain across the front of her tunic, black holes dotting the line. They hadn’t hit her face, though it was splattered with blood.

I knelt beside her, staring, realizing that I was facing the same paradox she’d mentioned to me the night before. How many times had I sat beside dead bodies? Why was it still so hard to accept when it’s someone you knew and cared about? Every death should affect me this way. Rok did. Nita Robles did. But many others didn’t, except in some abstract way. That seemed wrong somehow. But this, this emptiness at the core of me, that seemed right, the only reaction possible to the absolute absence of Rok, of Nita.

Much as I didn’t want to, I sat down at the end of the hall, began to slow my breathing and heighten my senses to the point where a new sense would emerge.

The place tasted of the Beast, but different—something older, something larger. Of course, I thought to myself, it was his mother. The woman. Helena Crichton, or whatever she called herself now. Hannah Caine, if Morgan was right. I opened my eyes.

“
Are there security tapes?” I asked Gage.

He nodded. “Of course. Boss Roth is on his way. He’ll meet us in the media room.”

I didn’t like the way his eyes looked. He’d seen the tapes already, and clearly he didn’t like what was on them. I didn’t ask. I’d know for myself soon enough. We followed him back to the elevators.

The media room Roth joined us in was small, cramped, and jammed with screens and consoles. A technician played back the surveillance videos. From an elevated perspective near the ceiling we watched a woman step from the elevator with an automatic weapon in each hand and begin shooting.

Roth stared at the image on the screen. “Hannah Caine?” he said. “Hannah fucking
Caine
? I can’t believe it.”

“
You might remember her better as Helena Crichton,” Morgan said.

Roth turned his gaze from the screen to Morgan, but it was still the same disbelieving stare. “Helena Crichton died...” he started.

“
Not,” said Morgan. Her voice was flat and monotone. “One week after the People’s Takeover, she surfaced in El Tope, a small town just over the Mayacan border, with her newborn son and a suitcase full of cash. She hired some local thugs, had the local headman assassinated, and took over the town. Two years later, calling herself Hannah Caine, she bought her first brothel in Catalina, bought her way into the Harlot’s Guild, and then expanded to a place in Bay City.”

“
And the rest is fucking history,” Roth said. He blew out his breath. Then he focused on Morgan again. “You knew this and didn’t tell me? Elvis wept, she’s been tutoring my kid!”

“
We couldn’t be certain,” I said. “Think about it. Suppose we’d been wrong. That’s a heavy accusation to lay against the Headmadam of the Harlot’s Guild.”

Roth let it go. He clearly didn’t like it, but he was a practical man. He turned back to the screens and blew out his breath again.

“
Damn. I had no clue that woman would be capable—mentally, or physically. Unbelievable. And what about the Beast?”

“
She took his body from the morgue on her way out,” Gage answered.

“
Her son,” said Morgan. “Varger Caine. He served as a guardsman in Santa Brita during the Union Riots.”

I didn’t know where Morgan had come up with that, but I didn’t doubt she was right. “And,” I said, “he ran with a gang of Ravagers in the zones. He was responsible for the Hicks Junction massacre.”

Morgan looked at me. She had seen the swords the Beast had carried, so she must have realized this before. Or maybe not. Maybe it never sank in, distracted as she was over Rok.

I stared at the tape again, studying the woman. “She didn’t shift. I thought sure she was his teacher.”

“
She was,” said Morgan. “Look closer.” She leaned over, took the controls from the tech, ran the tape back and stopped it. “Look at her wrist when she reaches here. That’s not normal human musculature. She’s, like, half-shifted.”

“
She had to know about the security cameras,” Roth rumbled. “She wants us to know what and who she is.”

“
Where will she go now?” I asked.

“
Not to the Gates of Hell, I’m sure,” said Auden. I hadn’t realized he’d joined us.

“
Excuse me?”

Morgan said, “Her offices in the city are at her main hostelry, the Gate of Heaven. Some people call it the Gates of Hell.”

“
No,” said Gage, “she won’t go there, but we’d best send a team there anyway. Could be evidence there.”

“
Or resources we should cut off,” I added.

“
Call Judge DiCerto,” said Roth. “Get a warrant.” Gage was already on the phone.

Morgan was staring at her comp unit. “She has three brothels in the city,” she said. “One with an attached gaming hell, two hotels here, one in Santa Brita, and a house in Anderson.”

“
We’ll cordon off the routes out of the city to the north and east,” said Auden.

“
This woman won’t retreat to Santa Brita,” I said. “She’s not finished. Roth is still alive, and we’ve killed her Beast—her son. You throw your cordon up, Investigator, but my bet is she’s not going to leave Bay City. Let’s check those hotels and brothels.”

“
She was probably operating out of the house in Anderson,” Morgan said. “It’s right near Hartshall. She’ll have cleared out of there by now, though.”

“
The place on the south side,” said Auden. “Lot of rough trade down there. Less chance of bloodstains and weaponry attracting attention.”

Gage shook his head. “But more chance of her expensive car and clothing being noticed,” he pointed out.

Something clicked. The Beast was a bonsai. And Hannah Caine—Helena Crichton—was the gardener.

“
He thought like she does,” I said, “like she taught him. She’ll think the same way. She’ll have a beat-up looking vehicle with a solid motor and a downscale wardrobe ready. Auden’s right. Send teams to the other places, but I’m going to the south side.”

“
Byer leave,” said Auden, “I’ll come with.”

We all started for the door, except for Morgan. “Wolf, a minute,” she said.

I waved the others on and turned back. Her look was grim, and she wouldn’t meet my eye.

“
You need to see this.” She turned her portable so I could see the screen.

“
What am I looking at?” I asked. There were two Citizen ID forms on the screen, and they looked very similar, and somehow familiar. I looked closer.

“
I ran a pattern recognition match for faces on picture IDs,” Morgan explained, “and came up with this match. The one on the right is the earliest record we can find on Helena Crichton, nee Hebat...”

The one on the left was my mother.

The photographs were identical.

“
How long have you known about this?” I asked.

46. IRENA—
33 Years Ago

Irena looked across the cab at Miguel driving the truck. He was tall but not bulky, his slim figure giving little hint of the strength it held. She’d seen him break a man’s spine once. Miguel had been useful this past year, and he seemed genuinely devoted to her. It would be a shame to kill him. She shook off the brief weakness. Reminded herself he was almost too strong, she would have to take him by surprise, kill him quickly.

Compassion, she thought, that was the problem. It weakened you, made you soft, and unable to deal with the harsh realities of life—especially the realities of magic and the supernatural.

The truck’s electric engine was beginning to struggle with hauling the old rustbucket up the steep mountain road. Outside Miguel’s window the stone of the mountain’s side had ceased to flash by, and was moving past sluggishly. Irena glanced out her side, where the edge of the road fell away into a vast canyon. Though she couldn’t see it past the mountain, she could tell the sun was beginning to sink in the west, and it would be dark soon. The mountain air was taking on a chill.

The Railwalkers had been full of compassion, and it made them weak. Oh, some were strong of arm, and some full of knowledge; training with them had been useful enough. But in the end they would be brought down by their compassion, always subject to the whims of the public they served, of the crows, of the spirits they dealt with. Spirits, Irena had decided, were to be commanded, not to be commanded by. The crows and the spirits were not the wise councilors they pretended to be; they always had their own agenda. And why not? In this world, she had discovered, you were either predator or prey, user or used, the one with the power or the powerless. And she was sick to death of being powerless. Tonight would fix that forever.

The truck slowed even more, the engine’s sound turning to a high whine. Shit, Irena thought, we could walk faster than this. “Stop the truck,” she said. “We’ll walk from here.”

“
Lo siento, Señora,” said Miguel, pulling over. He hit the button and engine’s whine died.

“
Nothing to apologize for, it is what it is. The truck won’t take it.” She shouldered her pack and got out, walked back to the bed of the truck. “Come on, get out,” she said.

The two figures in the truck bed stirred. The kid, full of fear, scuttled to the gate of the truck bed and jumped off. The woman followed more slowly, her eyes full of resentment above the gag that bound her mouth. Unlike the boy, she had trouble getting out of the truck with her hands tied, and almost fell. Irena watched, not moving to help. Miguel appeared and took the woman by the arm, leading her past the truck and up the road. Irena nodded at the boy, and they followed.

By the time they reached the wide plateau at the top of the mountain, the woman was breathing hard, and stumbling often, and the boy was flagging. Irena herself was feeling the effects of the thinner air, but she refused to let on, and did not acknowledge the others’ discomfort. She could see it in Miguel, too, but he hid it well, and no one who didn’t know him as well as she would have recognized it.

When they stopped, the woman fell down, wheezing. The boy sat on his haunches. Irena shed her pack, opened it. She took out the two stakes and a ball of twine. She planted one stake at the center of the plateau and tied the twine to it. She measured out four and a half feet, cut the twine with some to spare, and tied it to the other stake. Digging into the dirt with the second stake, she began to scribe a circle on the ground. She left a two-foot gap at the north.

“
Harina?” asked Miguel, holding up a bag of cornmeal.

“
Start in the east,” she said, nodding to where she had started the circle. She glanced at the boy, and the woman. Neither had moved.

The boy was maybe six. They’d picked him off the street in one of the last zone towns they’d passed through, the woman already hidden under tarps in the back of the truck. Irena’s own son would be half that age, she thought, traveling with Doc now, roaming the southwest as the man gambled and drank his life away. For a brief time Doc had convinced her that it was possible to forget the other world, live a life without visions or magic. Live like normals. It was all an illusion, of course. Now, if she had her own kid here, that would be a sacrifice that would cement her power unequivocally. If you could kill your own son, that would be proof positive you had purged yourself of love, compassion, all those softer feelings that made you weak, made you prey to the various blind forces of the world.

She wanted a drink, desperately. Just as well she’d forbidden Miguel to bring anything. Like compassion, her addiction to hooch was a weakness. She’d purge herself of that tonight, too. She watched Miguel fill the line she’d scored with cornmeal. The white meal seemed to glow in the twilight. She took the twine and stakes and began another, smaller circle to the south of the first one, almost touching. Within this circle she scribed a triangle. This time she left no opening or gap.

“
Now,” she said, when Miguel had outlined both circles and the triangle with cornmeal, “let’s get started.”

The woman who opened her eyes to the new dawn had once been called Irena, but had no name now. She lay on top of a mountain, at the center of a circle scribed in the earth and filled with cornmeal, much of the area within stained with blood. She sat up, blinking into the rising sun. Around her were the bodies of a man, a woman, and a child. Each had had their throats cut, their bodies sliced open, their entrails dragged out. The living woman looked down at herself. Her arms and hands were dark with caked, dried blood. She looked again at the carnage about her, and felt nothing. Yes, she thought, just as I should.

She glanced at the smaller circle and triangle to the south. There was no sign of the wraith that had appeared there, screaming, the night before. That was good. She had rid herself of her weakness, embodied it in that wraith, and destroyed it for good.