Darkwalker: A Tale of the Urban Shaman (8 page)

The muties lived mostly out in the zones. That’s where they came from, after all. In the Great Crash there had been a nuke dropped, and there were areas beyond the zones where it still wasn’t safe for any living being to go; you’d die of the burning sickness. Scientists said that same energy changed human genes so they’d produce mutants, which was why they mostly appeared in the zones.

You hear ancient legends of mutants with strange powers, but I haven’t seen that very often. Mostly, muties are just shaped weirdly, or missing something, or have some strangeness about them that cripples or disadvantages them. Occasionally it gives them advantages as well, but generally mental ones—they’re outstanding at mathematics or pattern recognition or something. Usually there’s some physical problem to go along with it. Very rarely, it gave them some physical edge: great size or strength, night sight, claws, whatever. I’d only seen that sort of thing a few times, but of course those were the types of things that got people talking, telling stories; so that was the popular impression of muties in the cities, where they weren’t seen as often.

Some folks pity them, some despise them. Me, I figure they got dealt a lousy hand, but they’re mostly like the rest of us on the inside. Unfortunately, I’ve seen the insides of enough of them to know.

The Beast Auden had seen, with his size and claws, could have been a mutie, but if so he was a rare one. Something the shade had said made me think the Beast was a shapeshifter, instead. Shifting your shape was an acquired skill; shapeshifters were made, not born. It wasn’t one of those apparently occult powers that muties were sometimes born with. A shapeshifter was a magic user, which could possibly imply other uses of magic as well, though that wasn’t a given. Changing shape was a major operation. To do it well took lots of training, will, determination; it occupied lots of your time, so most shapeshifters I’d encountered weren’t exceptionally skilled at other types of magic. They tended to be specialists.

Patrolling the streets, Auden had come across the Beast at his work—killing a professional harlot named Suzi Mascarpone. It was the first time anyone had seen the killer. The investigator had been certain he had hit the Beast with all three rounds, yet the killer had jumped up again, disarmed the investigator, and then run off. It wasn’t likely an experienced investigator would be wrong about hitting his target. It was possible the killer could recover quickly from wounds by shifting just the flesh around them, but it would take enormous energy and concentration. More likely the Beast had been wearing body armor, or the shape he’d shifted to might have had its own built-in armor: thick, tough hide covering its vitals.

Reading between the lines of the report, it seemed almost as if the Beast were playing with Auden, taunting him. The fact that he’d done that, and refrained from killing the investigator when he probably could have done so fairly easily, along with the leaving of a mark near each victim, suggested a definite agenda. The harlot, Mascarpone, had been his intended victim and the investigator had not; the Beast had killed only his target.

Looking over the files on the victims, I could see why Auden and Gage were considering the religious angle. But although many of the victims had been active in one religious cult or another, they all followed different religions.

The first kill had been a fisherman, Arnold Hawthorne. His professional life had been pretty innocuous—he ran a small fishing boat that he’d inherited from his father, had four employees whom he apparently treated well, no complaints registered. Spent his weekends surfing. He was also the priest, or “Core Charger,” of a small circle of worshipers of Huey Otiz, God of the Sea. According to the notes, his congregation, or Brasse, had all been quite happy with him, and were grief stricken at his demise.

The second victim had been an archaeology teacher named Juan Castro. He was well liked by students and other teachers, although thought of as a little weird and eccentric. In his youth, Castro had headed up the Bay City College’s Campus Crusade for Cthulu, and was apparently still sometimes seen at their events. There was some debate amongst historians and mythologists as to whether Cthulu had been an actual ancient god or a product of a pre-Crash novelist’s imagination. The guard investigators seemed to have taken the impression that Castro was quite serious about Cthulu, but I had my doubts. Castro was also a big Roth supporter, had volunteered in Roth’s last campaign. Considering Roth stood for order and democracy, and Cthulu was generally taken to stand for chaos and apocalyptic disaster, it seemed to me Castro probably had his tongue in his cheek about the CCC. Of course, you could never tell for sure.

Guardsman James Fitch had come third. Fitch was a Soul-Areist. To the Railwalkers, Soul-Are is not a god, but a principle, the animating energy of the multiverse. We don’t invest Soul-Are with personality; it’s more like the Tao or the Force. Soul-Areists worship and pray to Soul-Are as a personal deity. Originally they approached the Railwalkers to act as their priesthood, but the order had refused. We couldn’t prevent them from disseminating a wrong-headed interpretation of our philosophy, but we didn’t have to support it.

The harlot, Suzi Mascarpone, had recently joined the Marilynists. That was a new one on me, but according to the information in the guard file it was a growing cult among the harlots, based on the idea of the Sacred Prostitute.

The last two victims seemed to break the pattern. Chief Adams had been a Christian, but not an ardent one. Attended his Church irregularly, mainly at the high holy days. Czernoff had been an atheist, although his friend Tyburn had called him a spiritual man.

I didn’t see that the religious angle was really holding much water. But then my own idea, that the Beast had some score against Roth, didn’t appear to be holding up well, either. Chief Adams and Treasurer Czernoff fit that pattern, and maybe Guardsman Fitch; and then the teacher, Castro, had worked on Roth’s campaign staff. But the others had no obvious connection.

All the victims had been mutilated in various ways. In most cases, pieces of them were missing, and never recovered.

Morgan looked up from her comp unit and pulled out one of her earbuds. “I think that’s it,” she said. “Not much beyond the shade’s answers. A few of those random vocal fragments you always get in recordings like this, but that’s pretty much it.”

She hit the playback.

“
George Frederic Adams?” my voice asked.

“
I was once, but I can’t talk long.” Morgan’s filters had cleaned it up some, but the voice from the speakerphone was still scratchy. “Move on, Mamma.”

“
We need your help,”

“
It’s duty, to serve and protect.”

“
Can you tell us about your killer?”

“
Ch-ch-ch-ch.... Turn and face the strange. It’s changes; it’s the training, y’know. Don’t make any bull moves.”

Rok held up a finger, and Morgan paused the recording. “That was the point where the DV came on,” she said.

Rok nodded. “The image was from an old black and white movie,
The Wolf Man
. It’s about a shapeshifter.”

“
And the color image?” I asked, “where the suitcase turned into a guy?”

“
Not sure.”

“
TV show,” said Morgan. “I think it was one of the Trek franchise programs had a shapeshifter in it.”

“
So it’s pretty clear what Adams means,” I said. “Our killer’s a skinwalker.”

Morgan started the recording again.

“
Who killed you?” I heard myself ask.

“
The sun is set, set on it. A boy has never wept, nor dashed a thousand kin.”

“
Did you know your killer?”

“
There is no self to know. Mother knows best. Memory is gone, on a work release.”

“
How did he get into the wardroom?”

“
Andy wasn’t there. The clothes are in a rucksack. Kindly take my shoes off.” This time I was the one held up a hand, and Morgan paused it again.

“
Gage said Andy’s the janitor,” said Rok.

“
And he wasn’t there, he was out sick or something,” said Morgan.

“‘
The clothes are in a rucksack,’” I quoted. “Want to bet our shapeshifter got in masquerading as Janitor Andy?” No one did. I nodded, and Morgan hit “play” again.

“
Can you tell us anything about the Beast?”

“
She told him father would be proud. The evil one is not for you, not yet.”

“
George? George Adams, can you hear me?”

“
I’m dust in the wind. French Canadian bean soup. It’s all I know.”

And that was all we had. Some of what we’d heard we recognized as random, nonsense phrases we’d heard before from other shades, like the one about the boy who dashed a thousand kin, or the French Canadian bean soup. Why certain phrases like that should keep cropping up over and over in dialogues with shades is beyond me, but they do.

Eliminating the nonsense, what we were pretty sure of from this one was that the shade of George Adams was doing his best to cooperate (“It’s duty, to serve and protect”), and that the killer was a shapeshifter (“It’s changes, it’s the training, y’know”). “There is no self to know” probably indicated some form of psychic training. He’d likely come into the wardroom in a disguise of some sort (“The clothes are in a rucksack”), possibly shapeshifted to the form of a janitor named Andrew Foreman (“Andy wasn’t there”). Foreman, it later turned out, had spent the evening in question in an emergency room, victim of a hit-and-run accident.

The jury would be out for a while on some of the other remarks. References to Mother or Momma were quite common in shade contacts, but it was hard to know in any given case whether they were nonsense babbling or had some actual relevance. Comments about fathers were more rare, and I wondered about “She told him father would be proud. The evil one is not for you, not yet.” Was Adams telling us that we couldn’t stop the Beast yet, or was the “evil one” someone else? Could this have been addressed to the Beast himself, by the “she” who told him Father would be proud? It seemed to me that the victims were getting a little closer to Roth with each subsequent killing, and I wondered if the Beast was maybe working his way up the food chain to the City Boss. Was Roth the “evil one” in the Beast’s mind? “Father would be proud...”

“
Wait a minute,” I said. “Run the recording back a bit.” Morgan backed it up, playing bits and pieces until I heard my own voice ask, “Who killed you?”

“
Right there,” I said.

“
The sun is set,” Adams’s scratchy voice told us. “Set on it.”

Maybe Adams hadn’t meant “sun,” but “son.” Suddenly, something clicked in my brain. The son was set on it... Father would be proud...

I grabbed the phone and called Roth. When he picked up, there was no “Hello,” only, “It’s nearly three A.M. This better be damned important.”

“
Did Wendell Crichton have a son?” I asked.

“
Railwalker Wolf? What? No, no children.”

“
Are you sure?”

“
Absolutely sure. It was one of the real tragedies of the Takeover. Crichton and his wife had problems having children. She’d finally gotten pregnant, but she was killed in the fighting, and the baby died with her. Why is this important?”

“
I guess it’s not. Sorry to have disturbed you.”

“
Oh, no problem. I had to wake up to answer the phone anyway.”

I hung up on Roth’s sarcasm.

“
You were thinking the Beast might be Crichton’s son?” Morgan asked.

“
Or connected to him somehow, working for him or something. But Roth says Crichton had no kids. His wife was pregnant at the time of the Takeover, but she and the baby both died in the fighting.”

“
Figures,” said Morgan. “That would have been too easy.”

8. WOLF

Morning sun streamed in the large windows to paint gold across the ranked desks of the investigators’ bullpen. There weren’t many people there at this time of morning, three or four of the investigators drinking coffee at their desks and doing paperwork, Sergeant Robles talking to one of them. We crossed the room through the bands of sunlight to where Rainer Auden’s desk sat.

“
Morning, Investigator Auden,” I said.

Auden eyed us from behind his desk. “Roth called you guys in,” he said without preamble, “and the Chief says we all gotta cooperate with you. I’m a paid employee of the city, and orders are orders. I’ll do what I’m told, but I don’t have to like it. The guard can look after its own.”

“
Well,” said Morgan, “two of you killed, the Chief right here in your own wardroom. I’d say you’ve done a bang-up job so far.”

Auden sat forward in his chair, fists balled, and for a moment I thought he was going to stand up and take a shot at her. Then I saw something shift in his eyes. He knew that however much he hated the truth, Morgan was right.