Chasing the Dragon (3 page)

"I got these," he held out a chip to her. It was standard issue data
transfer. She pinched it between her fingers, and her eyes got a glassy
look as she began to look at the pictures he'd given her, unfolding
them into images that he'd seen and now tried not to remember.
Unlike him, she didn't flinch at visions of apocalyptic slaughter.

She blinked as she closed the file. The chip seemed to have vanished, he had no idea where to. "He's been gone three months," she
said, referring to the demon responsible for what she had just seenTeazle.

"You know who that is in the picture?" It was the best way to say
it. Who it was would have been more accurate. He hadn't been able to
identify it himself. An Al had done that, after it had spent some time
putting the pieces together.

"Madame Des Loupes," Lila said, and for the first time in months
Malachi saw her composure falter. "Why would he kill her?"

Malachi shrugged. Demon politics didn't interest him. All he
knew about Madame was that she was the most powerful clairvoyant
of any age. The only person she feared wasn't Teazle Sikarza either, it
was Sarasilien.

Three months and two weeks previously Sarasilien the elf had been
steadily working in his long-term office of diplomatic liaison to the
Otopian Secret Service. One minute to the second after Malachi and Lila
had rematerialised in Bay City he'd dropped everything and left.
Nobody had seen him since. He'd been a surrogate father to Lila, and
Mal hadn't known how to tell Lila he was gone, so he just didn't tell her
at all. Fortunately there was enough to deal with that he needn't worry
about that yet, or so he'd thought. As it was, besides that coincidence
which was clearly no coincidence, there was nothing to connect
Sarasilien to Madame's death and plenty of evidence that pointed at
Teazle. It was curiously easier to tell Lila that Teazle was the suspected
killer, though he was her husband, than it was to tell her about the elf.
Even Malachi didn't understand what the reason behind it would be.

Motive wasn't the question that bothered Mal. There were perhaps
a dozen reasons Teazle might kill anyone, not least of which was
because he felt like it, but as a result of their immersion in Under, they
had all changed: Lila, Teazle, Zal, and himself. Thinking of this
Malachi licked self-consciously around his too-big canine teeth and for
the thousandth time considered having them filed down. He'd do it, if
he didn't think it might have horrible repercussions somehow, in parts
of him that he had forgotten but which might be important.

"How would he kill her?" Lila rephrased, jolting Malachi out of his
dental fantasy. A frown made the rain suddenly dash down her nose and
drip off the end. "I mean, she had clear sight, she'd see it coming, surely."
Then she met Malachi's gaze with a curious one, a sad one of her own.

She couldn't resist mentioning him, even though she'd promised
herself not to. No talking about Zal. No brooding. He wasn't dead.
"Why doesn't he come back?"

Malachi shrugged. He didn't mention he was gladder that the
demon was absent. Teazle made him deeply uneasy, never more so than
since he had returned from Faery a changed being. Always lethal and
ready to slay in his true form, he seemed to have disconcertingly
acquired a form that was made of light, rendering him negligibly
material. He could teleport before, and now? Malachi had no idea what
he was capable of in that sense, but it added up to a scary prospect if
it got coupled with ambition, and this murder did seem to smell of
that on first sniff.

The rain was getting him down. "Do you think we could go somewhere more civilized?"

"Hm?" she glanced around them at the sheeting deluge, as though
only just becoming conscious of it. "Oh. Yes."

"My car's on the lot," he gestured back the way they'd come. She
nodded and fell into step with him. He watched her. She was pensive
all the way up to the car door and then she stopped with her hand on
it and looked across the roof at him.

"It's faked."

She was referring to the crime in the images. He could tell by the
seriously switched on look in her blue-violet eyes and because other
agents had said the same thing. His heart sank. "I know," he said,
opening the doors and wishing he'd brought a blanket to cover his
seats. "Get in."

The car creaked on its suspension as Lila eased into the passenger
side, so smooth and graceful she might have been made of air. It didn't
feel lopsided like it used to however. Malachi squinted at her as he
reached for his handkerchief, "Did you lose weight?"

"Apparently," she shrugged as she looked at him mopping his forehead delicately. Her fingertips ran over the upholstery. "At least you
went for a synthetic this time."

"My wages don't stretch to the insurance required by transporting
freaks of nature anymore," he muttered. "Speaking of fakes, what
tipped you off?"

Lila smiled a short-lived and wintry smile. "The body is butchered
almost into sludge. That's not Teazle's MO at all. He'd never waste the
energy." She hesitated and a flicker ran through her face, "Plus, if you
sum it all up, there just isn't enough of her to go around. They speculate he ate part of her, but that's classic necromancer-minion stuff or a
practice for an assassin who's on his way up the ladder, not at the top.
He'd never do that. Then, there's no sign of the Suitors and I don't
believe they'd stand around and watch her die."

Malachi nodded-he'd thought the same but he hadn't had the
stomach to search the images thoroughly enough to be sure.

Lila continued, "So, where are they? Plus, it makes no sense. Sure
he might have wanted her dead because I'm on her books as one of her
Eyes. He hates anyone having power over him. If she had a hold on me,
then tenuously she was getting a claw into him. But killing her serves
no other use. The demons might all fear her, but they want her alive
because she's number one in their defense systems against Who Knows What? But I keep coming back to the more basic fact that all the parts
look right but don't add up. They don't match. You put it together and
you get Frankenstein's monster, not Madame Des Loupes. I'd bet she
isn't even dead. So what is this about?" The chip had reappeared in her
fingers magician-style as she spoke. She turned it over and over like a
coin between her knuckles and then gave it back to him.

He put it in his jacket pocket and started the car with the key.
"They're for you, honey. The Service knows you're back and it seems
they've lost patience waiting for you to come home."

"Eh ... so they want to fit up my husband on some faked
murder?"

"Them and some other people. This came to my hands in a
roundabout way. I know they think I see you. They're betting I'll
show you, and tell you that Teazle is wanted for this, in Demonia.
Their top Necromancer has fingered him for it. The forensics might
give the lie, but he was the coroner on the case so it's a done deal. It's
kind of a traditional demon way of getting rid of real trouble. The
sentence is passed."

Lila stared through the windshield at a world that was flowing and
running and warped by the rain. "Kill on sight," she murmured,
almost to herself. It was the penalty for Illegitimate Murder in
Demonia. "What's the bounty?"

"His house, his estates, and all he owns in perpetuity. And Lila,"
Malachi waited until she turned to face him and for an instant the
violet eyes of the dress's girl became the curved mirrors of her true self,
paying him full attention. The chameleon change showed how
uncomfortable she had become.

"Yes?"

"You have to know-Teazle has been on a spree the like of which
no one has seen in a literal age. They call it the Rain of Death. By the
time this came out, yesterday at noon, he'd slaughtered his way
through almost the entire crop of Bathsheban high society and made a good inroad into the Shalazad Dynasty. He currently owns eighteen
and a quarter percent of the total wealth of Demonia and has rule over
fifteen family houses and nine crime syndicates." He shared this, sure
in the knowledge that no other human without firsthand experience of
demon life would understand the true scale and monumental, suicidal
ambition of this enterprise. He added with a wry half-grin, "They're
all loyal to him, too, or he'd be occasional tableware by now."

Her face went pale and seemed to age, flesh drawing closer to the
skull. "But it can't last," she said quietly. "So much money. So much
power. They'll all rise to challenge him. But why, Malachi? Why did
he do that?"

Malachi shrugged, "No idea. That trip to Under surely did something to him. Thing is, the Otopians and the Demons have done this
fit-up together, with Faery help. They all see him as a major threat and
they want him gone and they want you to show yourself."

She did the frown that made two tiny lines between her brows. It
made her face endearing, he thought, although he wouldn't dare say it.
"I don't really think he needs me...."

"Not to protect him, you dollop. To hunt him," Malachi broke
over the top of her words with annoyance. "In demon law you're bound
to the task, as his wife, number one. Two, you stand to inherit both
ways if he dies, which effectively puts a human in charge of Demonia
for the nought point however many seconds you survive the office.
Three, he is a menace and you are about one of the only creatures who
stand a realistic shot at nuking him. Four, they want you back in
ranks. They've figured out you're the one behind the missing rogues
and their vanished agents-all the ones you disposed of on your
arrival-and they're willing to make you a serious offer."

Her face was attentive, open, pleasant. God, he didn't like the look
of this.

"I hate being the messenger!" He slammed the wheel with his
hand and closed his eyes for a moment to regain his composure. The taste of blood let him know he'd cut his own lip on his fangs. He fussed
with his handkerchief, realised it was silk, and started to look in the
glove box for a tissue instead. "If you bring them Teazle on a plate
they'll give you all the World Seven Technology and control of the
projects it was used in. They want you to lead that unit. You'll have
complete authority. The only person over you will be the president."

She looked at him for one serious blue second. Then she burst out
laughing. She laughed so hard that tears streamed down her face and
got lost in the rainwater. Gasping for breath, holding her side with one
hand, "Oh that was good!" she panted in between snickers. "That must
have taken hours to make up. You really had me going! You bastard.
Queen of Demons and ruler of the Secret Cyborgs? That was a bit far.
Nice pictures though."

He looked at the blood drops on the tissue paper and saw them
spreading slowly into seven giggling pixies. He screwed the thing up,
wound down the window, and shoved it out. "It's not a joke."

"Oh, Mal," she patted his knee gently, her gales subsiding into gentle
rolling fits. Then, as he sat miserably wondering what it was he'd ever
done to make another second in Otopia worthwhile she coughed and
cleared her throat and her face started to fall. "Mal. Is it? Mal. No."

"Where's the sword?" he asked her, dead straight. He knew it
would wipe the smile off her face and cursed himself when it did.

"I've got it," she said, suddenly cautious. "Why? What is this?"

"Someone at work knows about it. I don't know how. But they
know. That's why this is here now. They know that it's what you used
to dispatch the rogues. They want it. Or, they want to know what it
can do and make sure you use it for them if you use it at all. That's the
trouble with ancient artifactual objects ..." he trailed off and started
cursing ferociously in the faery speech so she couldn't understand him.
By the end of it he was gripping the wheel, his knuckles aching and
his fingernails grown into claws that cut into the skin of his hands. He
released them slowly and gently and turned again to her with a trou bled face, his orange eyes glowing through the black lenses of his
glasses like miniature suns. "Lila, you have to do something. I think
I've kept you secret, but obviously not. I don't think I was followed,
but I don't know. They're giving you a grace moment. It won't last."

She sat and stared at him for several seconds, then without a word
she got out of the car into the pouring rain and took off. He heard her
jets start and felt the air push at the car as she took off, but instead of
seeing her leap into the sky he saw a strange grey and violet bird spring
up, spread enormous, tattered wings, and beat its way into the air.

"'Demalion," he whispered, making a warding sign of the old
gods, feeling angry and troubled. No way should these things be happening in Otopian space, but, then, it was hard to get worked up
about it when all the streets full of psychics and mediums and faith
healers said otherwise.

Human wasn't what it used to be. Nothing was.

ila flew above the city in the rain clouds. The mist blotted every-
Ithing out of visual contact and left her with more space in her head
to contemplate what Mal had just told her. She had other senses,
including radar, to take care of collision control, though she wasn't
aware of them working any more than she was aware of breathing
unless she paid attention to it. Around her the silky mantle of the tattered dress folded itself tight and warm, shedding rainwater in drops
stained lilac though the fabric never faded.