Dead Reign (21 page)

“I’ll see to it, my lord,” Ayres said.

Death appeared to notice the walking corpses for the first time. “Oh, my, Ayres, you’ve finally decided to find some help. Good, good. I like having a few dead ones around.”

“Does it remind you of home, my lord?” Booth inquired politely.

“Not at all. Where I come from, we have the spirits, but not the bodies.
These
are bodies, stripped of their spirits. All fall under my authority, of course, flesh and spirit both, but no, rotting meat-husks don’t remind me of home. You are the only one here who reminds me of home.”

Booth practically preened, and Ayres gritted his teeth.

“My lord,” Booth said, in his smooth, urbane voice, “perhaps you could see fit to put me directly under your authority, so that I might better serve you. I spend so much time helping Ayres now, I fear—”

“Cease your prattle.” Death tossed back a whiskey. “I’ve just listened to five whores complain endlessly about hunger and exhaustion, and I’m in no mood to listen to you. I gave Ayres dominion over the dead, and you’re dead, so do as he says. I told him not to banish you. Be grateful.”

Ayres grinned at Booth viciously, victoriously. “My lord. Among mortals, titles are important. The other sorcerers might accept my authority as your spokesperson more readily if you called me, say, consiglieri, or prime minister—or, perhaps, vizier?”

Death belched. “Call yourself King High Shit of Excrement Hall, for all I care, Ayres. Tell me, have you heard of a woman called Mary Madeline Monroe? I’m told she wants to fuck me.”

“Ah,” Ayres said. “Yes, she is a famed sexual magician. I imagine she would leap at the chance to pleasure a god.” She’d reportedly fucked an incubus, a succubus, a rakosh, something radiant that claimed to be an angel, a djinn, and various lycanthropes, and increased her magic tenfold with every conquest.

“Yes, but is she worth a lay?”

“I have never experienced her intimate company, my lord, but her beauty is supernatural, and her skills are reportedly unparalleled.”

“Right, then. I’m fucking her this evening. Is there any pressing business I should attend to before I visit this casino Nicolette has been telling me about?”

“There is the matter of Viscarro, sir,” Ayres said. “He is the only sorcerer of note who hasn’t sworn fealty to you. He refuses to emerge from his spider hole.”

“All right, fine, I’ll go kick down his door tomorrow. That all?”

“The Chamberlain called to remind you that the Founders’ Ball is rapidly approaching, and she hopes you will have sufficient time to prepare.”

“Those ghosts have her whipped, don’t they? Remind the Chamberlain that I’m a
god,
and that I’ll make sure the party is the greatest this city has ever seen.” He started to go, then paused. “That thing I told you to take care of.”

“Chained, bound, passed on to the Bay Witch, sunk to the depths.”

“Good man.” Death actually slapped Ayres on the shoulder on his way out the door.

Ayres took a deep breath. He made all the zombies stop, turn, and stare at Booth, who lounged against the wall. “Oh, Booth,” Ayres said. “I need you to run a message over to the Chamberlain for me.”

Booth straightened, sputtering, “That uppity colored—”

“Shh,” Ayres said, pressing a finger to his lips. “I’ve told you, don’t bad-mouth your betters.”

A lock of dark hair fell into Booth’s eyes, and he brushed it away, his eyes damp, his expression partway to madness. “You could contact her over your telephone,” Booth said, carefully pronouncing the last word. “That would be faster than sending me afoot.”

“Mmm, but sending you takes so much less effort than dialing a phone. Get a move on, and tell her the Walking Death has the matter of the Founders’ Ball well in hand. Be polite, Booth. Obey the Chamberlain as you would obey me.”

The assassin slunk away, and Ayres leaned back in the chair, closing his eyes. Only mid-morning, true, but he needed a nap. Being the greatest necromancer in the world was tiring work.

Beadle had a magic mirror slaved to a pair of spectacles Langford was wearing, so he and Rondeau could watch Death head for his date with high explosives. The two hid out in an alley two blocks from Marla’s apartment, huddled around the hand mirror like schoolkids sneaking a portable TV into math class to watch a ball game. Langford was on a rooftop across the street from the target location, looking down on the likeliest approaches to the warehouse.

“I think that’s him,” Rondeau whispered, as if Death might hear him. The tiny image on the screen sharpened as Langford adjusted the glasses, and the god jumped into clear focus, strutting along the deserted street as if he owned the place—which, increasingly, he did.

Death rapped on the warehouse’s side door, opened it, and stepped inside.

“Here we go,” Beadle said.

There was no sound from the mirror, but they heard the explosion distantly anyway—it was only a couple of miles away. Langford ducked out of the way, but smoke and dust wafted down around him, and Rondeau and Beadle cheered. The image jerked as Langford moved across the roof, probably crouching and scuttling, but then he paused, focusing on something on the rooftop. “What’s that?” Rondeau squinted.

The image came closer, and Rondeau gasped. “Shit. That’s Death’s
hand.
” The hand was blackened, torn off about an inch below the wrist, and missing its pinky finger, but it was unmistakable—there were still rings on all the fingers that remained. Langford’s own hands, clothed in white surgical gloves, entered the frame, reaching for the severed hand.

“No, no,” Beadle murmured, and Rondeau sucked air through his teeth. Langford was curious. He was a scientist. The idea of having the hand of a god to study would be irresistible to him, even if the hand was just the equivalent of a glove for a being of such power. But before Langford could pick up the hand, it rolled over, stood up on its fingers like something out of a bad horror movie, and scurried away across the roof, presumably to reunite with the other fragments of the god. Langford held up his hand in an
A-OK
sign and the image on the mirror went dark.

“We’d better get to Marla’s before he puts himself back together again,” Beadle said.

“I know we didn’t do any permanent damage,” Rondeau said, breaking into a wide smile, “but doesn’t it make you happy, knowing we just pissed off that fucker
bad
?”

Death slammed into the penthouse, startling Ayres and Booth, who sat in gloating and tense silence, respectively, watching the flickering images of a black-and-white movie on the enormous television. “Someone will die for this,” the god growled, and Ayres and Booth exchanged glances.

“What’s wrong, my lord?” Ayres struggled to his feet, using for leverage the stick Booth had fetched him. It was a good stick, though he hadn’t cast any enchantments on it yet.

Death glanced at the television, and the channel switched to a breaking news report, a glossy brunette at a news desk speaking seriously about an explosion in a warehouse down by the old train yard, no injuries, fire contained, officials investigating, possible gas leak. “That,” Death said, “was the site of my rendezvous. Someone tried to blow me up.” He stalked through the room, toward the bar, stepping on the glass-topped coffee table as he went, not even noticing when it shattered beneath his boot. He poured a glass of vodka and sucked it down. “That hurt. I lost most of my old body, and had to make a new one. It was inconvenient. I have to get the flesh from somewhere, you know. Fortunately there were lots of rats killed in the explosion, so I just harvested their cells.” He held up his hand and stared at it. “I thought the knife cutting off my fingers was bad. This was…fire. Sharp things. Heat. My flesh melting, fusing to my bones, bits of me falling from the sky and thumping down…” He shuddered. “I’ll never forget that. I want to make someone
else
feel that. That bitch tricked me.”

Ayres opened his phone and called Hamil. “Mary Madeline Monroe tried to kill Death. She must be brought to justice.”

“Mary Madeline Monroe is in Thailand studying the sexual culture of ladyboys,” Hamil said. “I rather doubt she’s even aware of the Walking Death’s existence.”

Ayres closed the phone. “Sir. My lord. The sex magician is not in the country. You were betrayed. Some conspiracy.”

“Fools,” Booth said. “They should know you cannot be assassinated. You are
Death.
Death does not die.”

“No, they can’t kill me,” the god said. “But I can kill them. Better, I can make them wish for death, and then withhold it. Who was it, Ayres? Who could have done it?”

Rondeau?
Ayres wondered. Could he have arranged something like this? Rondeau struck Ayres as basically a spear-carrier—capable of improvising, of course, but to plan something like this? Before Ayres could speculate aloud, however, Death answered his own question.

“Viscarro. The one sorcerer of note who hasn’t pledged himself to me, who thinks he can hide from me. It was him.”

Ayres wasn’t so sure, but he nodded anyway. “He does despise change, and he has many apprentices to help him plot such a scheme. It could have been him, my lord.” Viscarro was also somewhat protected from Death, since his life was hidden away in a stone somewhere in his vaults. Ayres wanted to tell the god that Viscarro was an undead thing, but he couldn’t—he’d sworn secrecy in a circle of binding, and to speak now would be the death of Ayres himself.

“We’ll deal with him, then,” Death said.

“Now, my lord?”

“Let him think I’m dead, or driven off,” Death said. “Let’s see if he comes out of his hole, see if he makes contact with any other conspirators. We’ll go see him, either way, at first light tomorrow. In the meantime, Ayres, take your slaves here to the nearest cemetery and start opening graves. Set every corpse you dig up with the task of digging up another corpse, and animate those. I want a little army of corpses at my back. I can’t be everywhere at once—not without giving up these bodily delights I’ve come to enjoy—and it’s time this city respected me. I’ve been too kind to them, but if they want to fight me…well, we can fight.”

“The ordinaries might notice hordes of skeletons on the street, my lord,” Ayres said.

“So drape them in illusions,” Death said, waving his hand. “Give them the semblance of life.”

“My skills at illusion are not so powerful, I fear.” Ayres hated to admit any weakness in front of Booth. “I could not disguise so many.”

Death made a frustrated sound. “I have to do everything? Fine, you have my proxy. My realm is a realm of illusions, and you may use some of my power to make my army look like living souls. Fetch shovels and dig! This whole building is empty. Let’s fill it with warriors.” Death cracked his knuckles. “If Viscarro is the rotten tooth, we’ll extract him. And if the rot extends further, we’ll just keep digging until every fool who had a hand in attacking me begs for death.”

As Booth and Ayres left the building, trailed by half a dozen undead slaves, Booth said, “I thought he was just a coddled and privileged boy with power, but it seems he’s a man, after all.”

“He’s more than a man,” Ayres said. “He’s a god.”

“What I mean to say is—”

“Shut up,” Ayres said. “Go stand with the other slaves.”

Booth withdrew, but Ayres took no pleasure in the assassin’s subjugation. He preferred being the vizier to a happy, rutting dictator. An angry Walking Death meant hard work for Ayres, and he was an old man, and behind on his sleep.
Still,
he thought,
raising a whole cemetery. That’s the sort of act that leads to legends.

“The wardrobe isn’t here,” Rondeau said. “It’s normally
right here
!”

Beadle nodded. “There are still traces of the magic, but it’s gone, and has been for hours, at least.”

“Can you track it?”

Beadle shook his head. “I can only sense the spells because they sat here, on this spot, for so long, it’s like a wine stain soaking into a carpet. Now that’s it been moved…No. I have no idea where it’s gone.”

“Maybe Viscarro stole it.” Rondeau paced around Marla’s bedroom. “He’s always coveted her artifacts. Or maybe Death recognized it as a threat and took it. But who knows?”

“So what now?”

“How should I know?”

“You’re the leader,” Beadle said, gently.

Rondeau stopped pacing. “Right. Yes. The leader.” He considered. He pondered. He looked at the ceiling. “Shit. I don’t know.”

“All right. Let me know when you
do
know.” Beadle glanced at his pocket watch. “But let me know soon. There may be repercussions from our assault on Death. We should be prepared for possible retaliation.”

Rondeau groaned. Marla always said “plan” was a four-letter word for something that didn’t work, but Rondeau hadn’t really understood that; he’d been prepared for success. And he didn’t have Marla to bail him out this time. He had faith she was out there somewhere, working an angle of her own, but he was the one in Felport, and he couldn’t just wait for her to come charging back. “Okay,” he said. “I’ve got an idea.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ll tell you later. I need to check something out first.” Which spared Rondeau from admitting he didn’t really have an idea. But there was no reason to diminish the morale of his troops.