One Foot in the Fade, page 37
His footsteps echoed away, and as the image of the alley flickered and faded, a face slid into view: a grinning fool with five red marks across his forehead.
“Well, if it isn’t the man who fixes things,” said the mask-maker. “So, did you manage to save the world?”
I’d never been so happy to fall unconscious.
65
“I thought you’d learned how to dodge.”
The world was out of focus but the lisp was unmistakable.
“Simms.” My voice had been dragged for miles down a gravel road. I tried to move my arms, but they wouldn’t respond. “What happened to me?”
“You got stabbed in an alley. A boringly predictable outcome, I know. Gone for weeks, then you’re almost killed by an overeager pickpocket. You’re lucky someone saw it happen and got you to hospital soon enough to save you.”
I blinked. My eyes were as dry as my throat. I tried to look down at my hands, but everything hurt.
“My arms,” I coughed. “What’s wrong with them?”
Simms stepped closer to the bed. I braced myself for terrible news.
“They’re handcuffed to the bed, you idiot. Didn’t want you waking up in the middle of the night and slipping out on us.”
Fear turned to relief, which turned to confusion, then anger.
“Why the fuck would you tie me up?”
“Don’t hurt yourself. Here, have some water.”
She pushed a straw towards my mouth. I kept my lips closed.
“Don’t be a petty child, Fetch. Drink.” I couldn’t resist it any longer, so I put my lips around the straw and sucked it down. “Go easy. You’ve been out for a few days.”
“I’ve what?”
Goddamn, my throat felt better.
“You almost died, Fetch. Because of your own carelessness. This isn’t my fault.”
“Yeah, but you tied me up.”
“Because you’re under arrest. Accessory to murder.”
Most other days, I’d scoff at that. But not today. There were too many murders fresh in my mind. Woodsmen lying in the forest. Wizards up in Incava. A Minotaur, perhaps the last of its kind, now a corpse in a castle. Then there was the accident. I hadn’t checked on Larry. What if he hadn’t made it out? Or what if someone had found Linda and the others before they woke up?
Fuck.
“Which one?” I asked.
Simms raised her eyebrows. “That’s not the usual response I get when I accuse someone of a crime. You want to save this conversation till you wake up a little, or would you prefer to incriminate yourself now?”
“Piss off, Simms. I thought you only cared about city crimes, anyway.”
“I do.” She pulled a stack of papers out of her pocket and cleared her throat. “Brother Owen Benjamin: you discovered the identity of the killer but didn’t bring that information to the attention of authorities.”
She held up the first bit of paper. It was a photo of Benjamin splattered on the sidewalk.
“Fuck you. That wasn’t murder. It was an accident. She—”
Simms flipped to the next photo.
“Kellen Umbra. Mage. Death by electrocution. You witnessed a pattern of these murders and still refused to come forward.”
“It was a mistake. She asked their permission, and—”
“Cormac Alexander. Incinerated.”
“I don’t know who that is.”
“Pamela Lismore. Induced heart attack.”
“What does that even mean?”
She threw each photo on my bed as she read out name after name.
“Judith Ash. Martin Wellington. Ishmael Amor.”
“Simms, what the fuck are you going on about?”
“Tiffany Leith. Mora Abraham. Emily Christie. John Ryan. Liam Tar. Astrid—”
“Simms! What the fuck are you on about?”
“THESE ARE ALL THE PEOPLE YOU KILLED, FETCH!”
Everyone went quiet, even those in other rooms and down the halls. Silence. Simms was hissing. Her tongue was out of her lips, vibrating with every breath.
“Simms, I don’t know any of those people. I promise.”
“And you never will, Fetch. They’re gone. Mothers. Husbands. Friends. All gone. All torn to pieces from within. Their own bodies turned against them.”
“No,” I said without meaning to. “She wouldn’t.”
The slightest hint of pity bled into Simms’s anger. She turned the remaining photos around and fanned them out.
“Fetch, her fingerprints are all over them.”
She was right. Every single body was deformed, twisted up, burned or broken, but they were all marked with the same slender handprint.
I couldn’t catch my breath. My chest hurt. I was shaking. The cuffs cut my wrists. A pain stabbed my stomach. I tried to scream but I was beyond screaming. It hurt to move. To breathe. To think.
“Hey,” I heard Simms say, her hand pressing down on me. “Hey, stop it! Stop it!”
I got some air into my lungs, but I kept shaking. Simms didn’t care.
“She did this, Fetch, and you let her do it. It’s all going to come down on your head.” She leaned over and looked right into my eyes. “Unless you’re the one who stops her.”
66
A fresh shirt and set of trousers were set out for me. Simms gave me water, some plain porridge, and made me walk around the hospital ward to make sure I wasn’t going to collapse as soon as I stepped outside.
“If you let him go,” warned the Satyr doctor, “he could very well die.”
“We can only hope,” replied Simms, dragging me out of the medical center and into the blinding sun. “It’ll save me the trouble of having to kill him myself if he doesn’t do what needs to be done.”
I covered my eyes with my hands, and even that hurt my side. It was loud. There was music somewhere. A marching band.
“What’s happening?” I asked, still getting a hold of my senses.
“Year of the Phoenix. A parade to celebrate Niles bringing the fires back. But don’t get distracted by the festivities, you’ve got work to do.” Simms shoved two packs of Clayfields into my hands. “Take them all. Doctor’s orders.”
With a sneer, I ripped open the pack and put three between my teeth. I felt the buzz but they did little for the pain.
“Why me, Simms? A city full of cops can do more than me with a hole in my belly.”
“My officers tried. You know what happened? They burned their fingers when they tried to grab her, then she grabbed them by the throat and did whatever it is she does when she touches someone’s skin. A junior constable’s bones stabbed her own body from the inside out. A Banshee detective screamed himself to death and burst the eardrums of a whole squad. I don’t want any of my Magum officers going anywhere near her, and I don’t have enough good Humans to catch her quick enough. I could wait for Thurston’s men to track her down, but they’ll shoot a dozen civilians before they find their first clue. I need her stopped now, before anyone else dies. It needs to be you.”
The Clayfields finally had some effect on my body, though it didn’t help the mess inside my head.
“You got any change?” I asked.
She fished a few stray coins out of her pocket and handed them over.
“What else do you need? You got weapons? Back-up?”
I walked away.
“If you don’t do this,” she called after me, “you’re as much to blame as she is.”
Fuck off, Simms. You don’t understand anything. Something’s gone wrong, that’s all. Maybe they asked for it. They might have heard what she could do, so they wanted to give it a try. There was going to be an explanation.
Crowds were gathering along Main Street. Chairs and rugs had been brought out onto the sidewalk and vendors roamed up and down selling silver cans of beer, roasted nuts, frozen juice and packs of streamers.
I went into the same payphone I’d used last time, avoided the frayed wires, and called the library.
“Eileen, what the hell happened?”
“Fetch? You’re awake.”
“Where’s Khay?”
She paused. “You disappeared. She came to me when she couldn’t find you. I tried to keep her calm, but she panicked. She thought that she was fading, and she just freaked out and left. I’m sorry.”
“But…” But what? I wanted some other answer. Some hint that Simms was wrong. “Is she really doing what they say?”
“I don’t think it’s her. Not really. The curse wants to be used. All magic does. It always did, but now it’s… well, you know.” Yeah, we both knew. We’d both seen what happened to people who tried to reclaim their powers after the Coda had taken them away. Edmund Rye, Rick Tippity, and many others. Why had we been so eager to ignore all that had come before?
Because we had to. Because we had to hope. Because what’s the point of any of it if you don’t believe that things can get better?
“I think it was the crown,” she continued. “I mean, it was all of it, but the crown was too much. Either that or…”
“Or what?”
Eileen sighed heavily into the receiver, sending sadness directly down the line.
“Or she just doesn’t want to die.”
We were quiet for a while, sitting with the most reasonable and most troublesome explanation. The receiver made a beeping sound to let me know that I was out of money. That’s the part where I should have scrambled to put more coins in, or make some kind of apology or say goodbye, but we both just listened to the sound as it beeped and beeped and went silent.
A shadow fell over me. Someone was waiting to use the phone.
“Yeah, I’m done. Just—”
I was slammed back against the wall of the booth, with five sharp points of pain around my throat.
“Linda,” I choked. “You made it back.”
She was filthy. Her eyes were bloodshot and her fur was matted and muddy.
“You worm.” Her voice was almost drowned out by the cheers of the crowd as the lead drummer brought the parade around the corner. “You left us to die.”
“Not true. I left you to sleep so I could escape, and very much hoped you wouldn’t die.” Her claws extended from her fingertips, deeper into the soft flesh around my neck. “Everyone’s all right, aren’t they? Larry and the others? They’re alive?”
The question only made her more furious.
“They’re alive. But you have no idea what we went through.”
“I don’t. I’d love to hear about it sometime, but you’re not the only person threatening to kill me today, so you’ll have to get in line.”
“Fetch, you—”
I grabbed the phone cord, right where the broken wires were sticking out, and an invisible mule kicked me sideways into the wall, cracking the glass.
Linda took the hit just as hard as I did, but, as I’d been expecting the shock, I was quicker to recover. From her crumpled position, she reached out and grabbed hold of my shirt. I pulled away, ripping all the buttons, and freed myself from her grasp.
“What did you do?” she panted, still in shock.
I stepped over her without answering and slammed the door shut. There was no way to lock it, so I just ran across the road and into the parade.
The marching band was made up mostly of schoolchildren. They blasted horns and trumpets and smashed cymbals and snare drums; just what I felt like after a week in the hospital. I weaved around them, moving up Main Street towards home, but as soon as I made it through the musical kids I ran straight into a dancing girl who seemed to be wearing nothing but feathers.
“Off the road, bozo,” she said as she shoved me to the side of the road and shimmied past, leading what looked like another hundred dancing girls and, behind them, the first float.
I froze at the utter audacity of what I was seeing.
A black truck pulled a trailer. The trailer was dressed up to look like a giant silver radio blasting upbeat, big band music and, on top of the radio, wearing a tuxedo and top hat and twirling a cane, was the very man who was throwing this parade in his own honor: Thurston Niles.
He was doing a terrible shuffle around a microphone stand, smiling his artificial smile at the cheering crowd.
“Happy anniversary, Sunder City!” he yelled into the mic, and the crowd roared back in adulation. What had we become? Gargantuan beasts used to fly above our heads on a daily basis, now we applauded a middle-aged man doing the box step just because he gave us a good price on washing machines.
Thurston spotted me in the crowd and his grin became less artificial and more maniacal. He pointed his cane right at me and waved, as if I was one of the kids captivated by the whole absurd production. I turned my back on him and squeezed through the crowd, desperate to get to Khay before she used her powers again.
I couldn’t feel the pain at all anymore; not the stitched-up puncture in my guts or the slit on my wrist, or the bruise that covered my entire nose. They were all blotted out by the marching band and the bellowing hellscape inside my head.
This was not how it was supposed to go. I only wanted to fix things.
I’d spent the first six years drowning in guilt. All but useless. Then I’d tried following others, and made more of a mess of things than ever before. With Khay, I’d finally, finally, started working. Working hard. And we’d fucking solved it! I’d cracked the case and gone and fought the monster and got the golden piece of shit that was supposed to make it all better, so why the hell was it still so fucking awful?
Linda thought that Khay was like Rye, but she was different. Wasn’t she? She was trying to help people, not just save herself.
Or maybe that was what she wanted to believe. A reason to justify what she needed to do to stay alive.
Because she kills them, or she dies.
That’s it. That’s all there is. Two terrible paths and no other way to go. No turning back. Just pain.
I got back to my building, trying not to dwell on the bare square of brick, cleaner than the wall around it, where the copper plaque had once been.
Fuck you, Georgio. You’re part of this too. If it’s on me, it’s on you.
The blinds were down again – strange at that hour – and the phone inside was ringing. Maybe Georgio had gone to the parade.
I waited outside. Listening. Nobody picked it up, so I opened the door.
The café was dead quiet, other than the telephone. It didn’t smell like it usually did. Not fresh. The air was thin, like the ovens and fryers hadn’t been used that day.
Ring.
I walked over.
Ring.
I picked up the phone.
I didn’t say anything at first. Just listened. Far away, a male voice said something like, “Yesterday, today and tomorrow!”
Somebody breathed into the receiver.
“Hello?” I asked.
“Fetch! Oh, Fetch, I saw they let you out. I was watching. I wanted to come see you, but I can’t. They’re all chasing me. They don’t understand.”
“Khay, calm down.”
“You understand, though, don’t you? You’re not angry?”
I didn’t know what I was. All the emotions were there, but they were pressed down, low, under a lead ball of dread that was getting heavier by the second.
“No, I’m not. Khay, where are you?”
“I… I can’t say, can I?”
“Yes you can. You can tell me.”
“I can’t. You hate me.”
“I don’t hate you.”
She sobbed.
“You will.”
The lead ball dropped lower.
“Why?”
Lower.
“I didn’t mean to. I was looking for you, but he wouldn’t tell me anything, and then he got angry and I… I’m sorry, Fetch, I—”
I left the receiver on the counter. Looked towards the kitchen.
“Georgio?” I called.
Nothing.
I stepped away from the buzzing phone and Khay’s desperate, panicked voice. The door to the kitchen was closed, so I pushed it open. No steam. No smell of coffee. No singing. No light.
“Georgio?”
Silence.
I stepped inside. Slowly. Light footfall, like creeping in the forest. Silence. So dark.
I reached out for the light switch. I’d never needed it before. Never been here alone.
I found the button. Rested my finger on it.
Don’t do it, Fetch. Just walk away. You don’t want to know.
I pressed down on the switch – only halfway – and as soon as there was a flash of light, I ripped my hand back and let the room go dark again. It was only a moment, but it was enough. Too much.
His body on the ground, leaning against the oven. His head was back, mouth open, and his face was bright red with the marks of those murderous fingers stretched across his skin.
I didn’t scream. I was going to be sick. I ran out of the kitchen. Out of the café. Eyes everywhere. The parade filled the street; more floats, more music, and there were people all over the place, on the sidewalk, the doorways, the windows, the roofs. Cops. Niles Company men. All watching me. Was Linda out there somewhere? She would be soon.
Screams fill my head. Bile in my throat. I move inside. Away from them. Away from it all. Up the stairs. Not silent now. Steps loud enough to cover my moaning. The sound is too loud to stay trapped in my brain. It wants to pour out of me but I bite down on it. Smother it. I turn the knob. It’s locked. No key. Must have lost it when I got mugged in the alley.
The words in front of me come into focus, painted black on frosted glass:
Fetch Phillips: Man for Hire.
I put my fist through the words and the window shatters. I reach through the empty space and turn the handle. I push my way in and fall face-first onto the bed. I stuff a pillow into my mouth and I scream.
I scream and I scream. I scream to quiet the world.
But the world just screams back.
67
When my voice was too hoarse and my lungs too empty for the screaming to help, I opened my eyes. There was blood on the sheets, less from the knife wound and more from my knuckles. That stupid goddamn window painted with that stupid goddamn name.
