Chasing the Dragon (32 page)

Lila followed Malachi quickly along the halls. Most doors were open
onto various rooms: a library, a sunroom, a computer suite, a playroom, a fitness room, a kitchen, several lounges, a dining room. In and out of
all of these came various figures of Sancha, reading, carrying, walking,
preoccupied, flickering about odds and ends of domestic life in various
changes of clothes. Sometimes there were more than one of her in a place,
even on the same seat. Here they interfered with each other, alternately
phasing in and out, fuzzing, flickering. It wasn't just spatial dimensions,
Lila realised. It was time. The woman was time-lapsed.

Then they came to the room she remembered best-the ocean
view-and her bewildered awe at such an existence, her wondering,
came to a halt. She looked down through the plate glass, across the terrazzo, through the gardens to the ocean, and it felt to her like Zal was
here only yesterday, might be in the garden, or in his room upstairs.
But then the details eroded the pain of the nostalgia. The pool was covered, the furniture there different. The garden had changed. And on
the shore the fully wrecked ugliness of the Ghost Hunter's Void ship
was beached, its gleam nearly gone, being pawed at by the sea.

"She came to you," Lila said, thinking aloud carelessly. She turned
around to the flickering shape and then it struck her, what had been
nagging her. "You look like ..

"Don't say it." Azevedo held up her hand. "I know. Princess Leia's
Artoo message. It's been noted. And yes. She did. But that's not your
business right this minute, is it?" She gestured gracefully. "Please, sit
down. Let's get through this as quickly as we can. I am pleased to help
you, but I don't have long before you must go."

Lila sat with Malachi on a beautiful leather sofa, only then noticing
the gracious loveliness of the room, the sunlight's warmth. It was
probably the only decent room in the entire place. Opposite them
Sancha Azevedo sat and gripped the arm of her own settee as if to
anchor herself. She obviously liked this room. There were at least six
other versions of her there, jumping in and out of existence, in and out
of time and space.

"Are you crossing?" Lila couldn't help but ask, looking at them all.

"I can be in more than one place at a time, yes."

Lila looked at her. "That must be hellish."

"You're here about your zombies," Azevedo said, a tautness
entering her smile. "It's a struggle for me to be so still, so please, keep
it to the point. Once I run out of concentration I will break up and that
will be it for a few days."

"Yesterday two showed up," Malachi said. "One at the office. One
at home."

Lila explained the circumstances. The fey watched her closely all
the while. When they'd finished she paused a moment. "We have
something in common then. I know your story from the Hunter,
though he forgot to mention your eyes. They're absolutely terrifying.
Anyway, we both have a break in transmission, let's say, though I have
a few more. Look, here's how it works. Zombies and ghosts are created
in the same way. Out in the Void there is plenty of free energy in various protoforms. When a magus comes along-a magus is anyone with
a powerfully focused mind, let me say-they act as an attractor. The
energy gathers and, under their influence, takes form. Ghosts are forms
created either by one or many minds, either slowly over aeons or
immediately by a great piercing focus. They spring from the living.
Zombies are clones. Material and spiritual clones of an individual, usually recently dead, but possibly alive in other circumstances. Where
people are weak they may become zombies if they are taken under control by a master, but you didn't have this sort." She flickered, guttering
like flames in a draft, and her voice broke up, returning in a stutter
over a period of a couple of minutes to complete the speech. "Ghosts
and zombies are like elementals in this respect, both forms. They share
the soul of the original, are part of it, because souls are always and
everywhere, not locked to time or space. Souls are like the Void. You
see? Everywhere and always, even in the most material worlds."

She paused, much weakened by the effort of talking for so long. Lila
didn't even move to interrupt her. The woman gave her a grateful glance and said, "What you had at the office really was your husband,
but not the only one of him, not the greater part, not what you would
call the original, not that it matters very much. But it was made of
ghost stuff, fresh out of the Void. It wasn't stable in this plane. It
wouldn't have lasted. It was a weak copy. The other one is different. The
other one is a strong copy, almost entirely primaterial in nature. It is
not your sister. But it is." She paused, took a breath, waved off Malachi
who was about to speak, and leaned forward with a sense of great
urgency. "No. No time for me. Listen. The important feature of these
things is who has made them and what they willed. It is easy, very easy,
for beings from other planes to hitch rides in zombies in a desire to
become material and inhabit the other worlds. Easy to use the weak the
same way. That is why zombie use and the training of weaklings to
magical knowledge is taboo among magi, including necromancers.
Nobody'd be that stupid. There are few minds in existence across any
time who have the strength to notice and resist the kinds of beings that
can cross over from the hidden places. Certainly they are almost impossible to manage. They have no natural material form of their own. They
are entirely thoughtform and will, nothing else. Beside their abilities
most sentient material creatures are no more troublesome to them than
amoeba." She paused and winked out completely.

They waited, and waited.

"I ... ," Lila began but then Sancha was back. She looked weary
and spoke now rapidly, in bursts, as if she was ill and out of breath.

"The last question you have is who made your zombies. The sister.
That was you. You made it. You called it up and it came to you.
Because of the instrument you have. Very foolish. Very careless. You
must find a necromancer to ask more detail if you want to know what
it truly is and if it is ridden. The spirit decays, you see. Soul's eternal
but spirits decay. Important to know difference. And the other. The
husband. That one was not you. And it was not the weapon. Someone
else sent it."

She blinked out. Returned. "It was ridden. It was open. So dangerous. I think it was ... good it failed ..." She began to judder, and
fury crossed her face as she began to lose her struggle to cohere and be
linear. "Come back in a few days. I ..." She stood up and they saw her
start talking to someone who wasn't there, looking in a direction that
wasn't at anything in their room. She became thin, transparent, and
then, after a series of violent flickers, vanished. Around them she
moved, without seeing them, pale, ghostly, multiple.

Lila and Malachi looked at one another.

"What a fucking existence," Lila said. Under the cloak she was
cold, shivering. "Well at least a couple of things got answered. Are the
hidden places-does that mean Thanatopia?"

Malachi nodded grimly. "You think Jones is here in the house?"

"If here means what it means to this lady? I guess probably, maybe,
who knows?"

"She can phase at will," he said. "I should look but...."

"But you're a guest in someone else's house and you should leave
nicely," Lila said. "Which is what we're going to do. If she's here, she
knows how to find you. Jones left you that thing, remember. Maybe
she's safe here. Figure out that before you go wrecking her cover."

"I ..." He paused. "Okay. Place is creeping me out anyway. I swear
this is the biggest earth energy sink on the whole continent."

They got up and began to walk carefully back the way they had
come, dodging and avoiding all the Sanchas who came their way.
Though neither of them said so, they both felt the same absolute
degree of caution about occupying the same space as any of Sancha's
disparate selves, however immaterial they seemed.

"If it is, why would Zal choose it?" Lila asked. "He was a fire
junkie."

"Earth consumes fire," Malachi said. "Safest place in town to hide
your light under that bushel. He was a hunted guy: here he could
summon a lot of fire and not be noticed."

At last they reached the relative sanity of the entryway, passed
through the door after unlocking it, and then got into the car. Malachi
turned them around and then stopped, taking a look back down at the
beach.

"Are they zombie dead in that ship?"

"I hope so," he said. He wasn't sure.

"There was a ghost here before, when Zal was here," Lila said. "It
came right for him. Why?"

Finally Malachi turned away from the sight of the shipwreck and
put his foot gently down on the accelerator. "Energy sinkholes are
weak spots. Easier for things to come through here. He was powerful,
it was hungry. Also, he was careless."

"No, he made a protection circle. It didn't affect it."

Malachi frowned. "No? Ghosts usually can't cross."

Lila opened the glove box, looking for anything, even the car
manual, as long as she didn't have to keep looking around at the Folly
and its grounds. "Oh yeah, what do they eat?"

"Memories. Information. Dreams. All that kind of stuff. And they
suck aetheric power from anyone stupid enough to let them try. Not
you humans obviously. By the way, what was it?"

"A stag kind of thing."

The car stopped with a jolt that nearly sent her forehead into the
dash.

"Mal, what the hell?"

"Like that one?"

The driveway from the house bent sharply in a switchback, and it
was on the second bend, shrouded in tree shadow so dark it might have
been twilight, that the creature was standing. A faint glow limned it,
giving away its true nature; otherwise, she would have thought it was
a giant elk at first. Its rack was almost as wide as the road and high
enough to tangle with the branches overhead, but it was not impeded
by the antlers at all. It snorted and turned to face them head-on from the position where they had caught it crossing the narrow tarmac strip.
Only then did the smell hit her, wafting on the afternoon warmth, a
sweet stink that was half rot and half poppy smoke and incense, myrrh
and the thick odour of dry dead things.

It looked as solid as an ox. Its fur was heavy, rank, and dark, its nostrils caverns on the wet black nose, eyes staring, whiteless, empty. A
black spill of shadows dripped off it, and poured and gathered around
its massive split hooves. Apart from its size, decay, and air of brooding
malevolence she found it familiar.

"That's it. But it's been on the evil steroids since then. Mal?"

"Yeah." He was watching it intently, his fingers moving lightly on
the wheel. "There's been quite a few reports about bad things like this
coming up recently. Three or four a week. Like you say, ordinary ghosts
but on the boo-juice."

The stag thing lowered its head. A slough of skin loosened on its
neck and fell away with a wet slap onto the ground.

"Ugh," Malachi gagged.

Lila's initial jolt of fear was receding into nausea. "It looks pretty
real."

"It is pretty real, just not entirely," he said. "I'd drive but I don't
think touching it is a good idea. I heard. That is, from the hospital.
People with some kind of wasting disease. They'd seen these things or
been up close to them. The link wasn't clear. Oh god, the smell ..."

It was choking, vile. Malachi put his sleeve to his face. Lila, used
to demon tricks, filtered her air and kept a straight face in spite of the
gut-churning nature of it. She took hold of the windshield to help her
stand up in her seat, formed a shotgun out of her right forearm, and
shot two rounds at it. The sound of the gun was almost deadened by
the miasma of shadow around the thing. It lowered its head further
and shook its antlers, opening its mouth to groan and bellow. Lila felt
the glass vibrate under her hand. More pieces of skin and other matter
slid and slipped out of the ghost's form. She saw them land on the road and become leaves, sticks, and the gloopy, rotten flesh of some animal
or other.

Moaning, the creature backed up a step, stumbled, backed more,
and then decided to head forwards into the trees. It had to struggle
with the undergrowth and trunks but it passed through them, shedding more parts of itself in a constant shower.

As soon as it had cleared enough space Malachi gunned the engine
and they screamed past it in a cloud of blue smoke. The old car slid
around the bends crazily, shock absorbers grinding, but he didn't touch
the brakes until they were at the main road.

Lila couldn't stop herself replaying the vision of the thing falling
apart and remaking itself as it pushed through the woods. When she
first saw it she was sure it had been composed of forest litter, but it had
seemed healthier, an animal spirit of a kind, not a monster. "What
kind of minds make that?"

Malachi bit his words out, still holding his breath as best he could.
"Undisciplined, fearful ones. The usual sort. No shortage of nightmares, is there?"

She shook her head silently in agreement. No shortage.

linda's house was not a house at all. Lily's and Mina's zones paid a
weak, cliched kind of homage to the end of the world, Zal realised
as they trekked through barren waste that would have been called a
desert except that desert had romantic and appealing implications
involving sand, sun, and recognisable objects that this ground had
none of. He wasn't sure they were walking. They were moving or
something was moving and it involved them passing through it. He
was tired and his grip on his senses was weak, not helped by all of them
having to work via cotton, linen, and bits of silk rather than the usual
organs they were associated with. Ahead of him Lily strode with the
determination used by people who don't want to go somewhere but
must and want to make the best of it. He was sure that she was
shrinking. This was confirmed as they entered a place of more definition and he realised the top of her head was at his forehead instead of
towering a good ten inches over.