At the Behest of the Dead (9 page)

“Beats the crap out of what I have been doing.”

I waited for her to elaborate.

“Running in circles, chasing leads that didn’t pan out. You know, jack shit.”

**

As I mentioned earlier
, Seattle was built on top of the burned out husk of a city. The old council had promised to pay to rebuild. While they were busy putting in streets, shop owners and merchants grew impatient so they started to build right on top of the old locations. This led to a two level Seattle that took time to navigate. I remember reading about some poor drunk who fell to his death from the top road to the bottom road while construction was underway.

Over the next fifteen years
, the city was rebuilt and the one below became a harbor and passage for women of ill repute. Nothing against them personally. It was a frontier town and there were only so many jobs for single women.

Over the yea
rs the walls inside fell down. They created dangerous spots to wander around, and then someone had the bright idea to turn the underground city into a tourist spot. Technically the city underneath was condemned but how in the hell do you tear down a bunch of buildings that support other buildings?

Now if you take the tour you will see underground passages, some staged furniture
, and disheveled rooms. There is a bathroom with toilets that flush backwards because they’re below sea level. You can see casts of hats, bowls left in dust, and plenty of signs warning you not to leave the tour group.

Andrews looked up and down the street and then smashed her shoulder i
nto the door. She leaned back and rubbed her arm.

“Shall I?”

“Just because I’m a woman doesn’t mean I’m not tough.”

“I have no doubt about either.”

“Either?”

“That you are a woman or that you are tough as nails
, but I had a more subtle idea.”

I rummaged in a bag and took out a little vial of clay. Pulling ou
t a piece the size of my fingertip, I held it under my mouth and muttered a few words. The clay was then jammed into the lock. I counted to three and was greeted by a click.

“Breaking and entering?”

“You started it.” I grinned and, to my surprise, she grinned back.

“You didn’t see anything, right? Cause I didn’t see anything. The door w
as like this when we got here. Probably a homeless guy.”

“That’s exactly what I saw too.”

The entryway reeked of the three Ds of underground life-- dirt, dust, and detritus. Andrews pulled a flashlight from her jacket and I felt along the wall until I located a light switch. To my surprise, the switch resulted in a long string of lights coming on.

“What the hell?” s
he said and slapped the switch off. “Ever heard of the element of surprise?”

“I’ve heard it is bad for your health.”

A shadow of a smirk met me in the dim light of the doorway, thanks to the streetlights.

The briefly lit image of the entry was just bricks and a fenced in walkway that was meant to keep tourist on
a pre- determined path. Spider webs criss-crossed every hallway, and I knew I was in for a night of constantly cleaning my robes. Consorting with creepy crawlers in the night. Think about that, kids, the next time you consider studying witchcraft.

“So how do we do this?”

“You try not to get in my way.”

“Hey, who’s the cop here?”

“Look, detective, I appreciate the backup, but have you ever faced down something like this? He or she is probably six plus feet tall. It will have razor sharp claws and a snout longer than your forearm. As soon as it senses fear it’ll attack and try to rip your throat out. As soon as it smells blood it’ll go into a frenzy and then it is even harder to stop. You can shoot it and it will cause damage, but not enough. You can empty your gun into its chest and it will smile while it snaps off your face.”

She swallowed and her grin f
ell.

“I have hollow point loads in my car. I can grab them if you think it will make a difference. See
, they enter one way and explode on the way out. Makes a hell of a mess.”

“Won’t matter. If it is what I think then they won’t slow him down. He’ll be on you in a heartbeat until you stop screaming.”

She took out her handgun anyway and checked the load. It looked like a big gun. The barrel was a massive hole that she raised and pointed into the dark hallway as she checked the sights. She slipped the magazine out and looked it over. I watched this, not impressed. She was very professional, but leave the lead balls to the amateurs.

I took a vial out of my pocket and opened it. I held my nose away and then bumped a black globule onto my finger. Created from a potent form of demon spore, the stuff was made to cover a person’s scent, make them take on the smell of their surroundings. It was similar to the stuf
f I had used the night before. Hopefully it would work a little more consistently. I rubbed a bit of the noxious stuff into my hair. It stuck and then faded with a hiss. The smell made me want to retch. I should have had this with me last night instead of the junior mint version I’d concocted on the fly.

“Don’t move.”

“Keep that shit away from me!” She didn’t know how right she was about the main ingredient.

“It’ll help hide you from the changer. Trust me on this one.” I leaned over to rub some into her hair. She flinched back
, so I took her chin in my hand. The detective’s skin was warm, flushed. I stared into her eyes for a moment. She stared back but I couldn’t read her. A puff of hair had fallen over her forehead so I pushed it back and got some of the spore applied.

“That is truly foul.” She took my hand in hers and pushed them aside.

“I’ll help you wash your hair later.”

“You did see my gun, right?”

My bandolier held the good stuff. I ran my fingers over the lead tops until I found one with hash marks under a pair of wavy lines. I extracted and studied the vial. It was dark, and when I shook it the potion inside moved languidly, as if it didn’t conform to normal thermodynamics.

“You get into trouble and you throw this right at the son of a bitch. I don’t care how scared you are. This’ll make his day suck worse than you can imagine.”

She studied the vial, but it was black glass and didn’t give a hint to its contents. She held it up and then looked at the stopper. Then she ran her fingertips over the wax seal.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” I warned.

She gave me a crooked smile. “Bad juju?”

“Bad brimstone. Probably melt your brain and then how will I get paid?”

She slowly moved the bottle away from her body. Her little smirk was also tucked away.

“Just don’t expose it to air. It’s fine as long as it’s locked up.”

“But you want me to throw it.”

“If it’s an emergency, sure. But run, or drop and curl up in a ball. Praying is optional.”

We walked along a creaking stairwell that was new compared to the rest of the place. Though it was over a hundred years old, the architecture was similar to the roman Victorian buildings in the older parts of this district. Doors were still doors and window sills, though missing glass, were made of brick and wood. Dust covered everything up to a quarter of an inch thick. If we got into a fight, I feared for my allergies. No amount of witchcraft had ever been able to stop the sneezing.

Detective Andrew
s light stabbed out and traced lines across the crumbling walls. When we came to the first drop, I stepped ahead of the detective and she handed me her light without a fuss. I took my time painting the wall with it while sniffing the air. About the only thing I smelled was a shitload of dust. I stifled a sneeze before it could rattle the walls. I stopped at a landing and listened.

A shape formed ahead. S
omething only I could make out. The salve in my eyes was good for more than just seeing in the dark.

The form was slight
, so I guessed it had been a female. She studied me as I studied and approached her. I opened myself to her and waited for her to respond in kind.

We touched.

She wasn’t going anywhere for a long time because she couldn’t let go. Her husband had been a good man until they didn’t find gold in California, so they moved to Seattle hoping to start up a carpentry business. His work ethic was not that great and he took to drinking when he lost job after job. He became abusive and one drunken night he determined that she was running around with a piano player. He took one of his hammers to her head.

I concentrated on the form I thought was attacking people in this area and she did a shimmer
, which I took for yes. Her form was vague, like a puff of barely visible cotton ball. The underground slid away from me and I felt her guiding, showing me what she had seen over the last few nights.

It came late, usually covered in blood. It was massive
, with a chest like a bodybuilder, only covered in fur. Elongated snout, razor sharp teeth – it was a creature made for nothing but killing. Then it was a man again and then the thing. That didn’t make sense. If a changer had gone rouge it should be in its animal form, not switching back and forth.

“What are you doing?” the detective called.

“Shh,” I hissed.

“Blame a girl for asking why
you’re swaying like a moron,” she mumbled.

The form showed me the paths it had taken while crisscrossing her abode. It was like an old black and white movie seen through a foggy window. There were ripples where it walked
, and I took this for the way the ghost saw things move in our world. The old world intruded on this one and left me confused when I saw the faces of the living among the burned out husk of the under city. Children, men, and women in home stitched clothing. Dogs running in the streets, then the echo of nothingness as tourists wandered the halls.

There was nothing I could do. Like an addict that refuses to give up their drugs
, this one refused to give up their essence. I moved away and gestured farewell. She answered with a sad attempt at a curtsy.

“We
gonna move on or you gonna sit there and shuffle back and forth like a drunk?”

“I was talking to a ghost. I think I know what we are facing
, and I think I know where it headed last night.”

“A ghost? O
kay, Phineas, I can take so much of this stuff before my head explodes, but talking to ghosts?” She had her hand on her forehead, the other tucked into a pocket by one finger. She fidgeted. Was it nerves or the stress of being an addict?

“What is it you think
I do, detective? I deal in witchcraft and I deal with the dead. Why scoff when I mention a ghost? They’re everywhere you know, all around us, but most don’t or can’t manifest. It takes a strong one, usually the recently dead who still have a grip on our world, to be able to show me what this one did. Didn’t you see the movie with Demi Moore?”

“Jesus.
” She looked upward and then back at me. “So what? She just started talking? How come I couldn’t see anything?”

“Because you don’t have the sight.”

“The what?”

“It’s something we’re born with. Some suppress it, ignore it, or walk away from it. Those of us that embrace it come into our power early in life.”

“How the hell did I get mixed up in this?” A loud rumble down one of the boarded up passageways between the buildings interrupted her protests.

I crouched low, fingers splayed.

“I’d call that a clue,” I whispered.

“I know clues, Phineas, and that was most definitely not one. That was something big and really pissed off.”

Andrews had her gun out in a half heartbeat. It was huge in her hands but she wasn’t shaking any more. Still, I groaned at its appearance. That’s just what I needed, to have her start firing wildly in the confined space.

“Wait here,
” I said, and I left no doubt in my voice that I didn't want her to heroically follow. She shot me a look of distaste.

I leapt over the railing and landed in a puff of dust, which really pissed off my allergies. After holding my breath for a couple of seconds to stifle the sneeze
, I reared back and let one fly. It echoed up and down the passageways like a shot.

Then I did it again.

Some dangerous warlock, eh?

“Was that a spell?” Andrews said.

“No one likes a smartass.” I muttered.

“
But everyone loves a little ass,” she muttered back.

I popped a vial and dipped my finger in. The residue, as the
elhorh ellay evaporated, burned so badly it felt like I was going to lose my finger. With my smoking tip, I drew a glyph in the air. A nasty one that would tear through flesh. I perched it in front and walked into the dark room. There, I caught sight of a spirit in the distance and moved toward it, hands held out like a zombie as I navigated fallen bricks, crushed mortar, and worn chunks of wood that were molding to the floor.