Night Terrors (20 page)

I couldn’t tell if Russell was kidding, and I decided not to ask.

“You know, someone more suspicious than I am might wonder if you want to split up so you can pursue whatever mysterious agenda your
real
bosses have. And someone even more suspicious yet might wonder if you’ve lied to me all along, and you’re really working for the Lords and are just playing some twisted and overly complicated game.”

He smiled. “Wheels within wheels, plots within plots, double- and triple-crosses, ad infinitum.” His smile fell away. “I can’t prove anything I’ve told you, and there’s plenty I’ve kept to myself for various reasons. You’re right not to trust me. Hell, I wouldn’t trust me either if I was you. But you want to find Jinx –
and
you’d like to question Shocktooth, right?”

“I’d like to question the scaly bitch upside the head with one of Jinx’s sledgehammers.”

He nodded. “So it only makes sense to split up. You have no idea how long it will take to track and free your partner. And who knows how long it will take to find Shocktooth?”

“Just look for the nearest swamp,” I muttered.

I looked at Russell for a long moment, trying to decide what I should do, and more importantly, what I believed. He had helped me get to Nod, and I knew I couldn’t stop him from leaving any time he wanted. Aside from my M-blade, I was unarmed, while he had his rapier as well as his demon dog Incubus. The fact that he was going to such lengths to convince me we were on the same side – in this situation at least – when he didn’t need to, said a lot.

But in the end, it came down to what I saw in his eyes. Sure, they were an adorable milk-chocolate brown, but that had nothing to do with it. I saw no hint of deception in his gaze, just openness, and maybe a touch of fear that I wouldn’t believe him. That it mattered what I thought of him.

“How will we find each other? I don’t have a wisper, and my phone doesn’t get any service here.”

He smiled and tapped the side of his nose with a finger. “Bloodshedder will find you.”

The demon dog let out a snort, as if to say that while she didn’t particularly enjoy my scent, she’d had no trouble tracking me down.

“All right.” I reached into my jacket pocket, removed a negator, and handed it to Russell. “For when you find Shocktooth,” I explained.

“Take my rapier. I won’t need it as long as I have Bloodshedder to protect me.”

He started to unbuckle his scabbard, but I held up a hand to stop him.

“Thanks, but I’m strictly a gun-and-knife girl. Besides, I really suck when it comes to using those things, I’d be just as likely to slice off one of my own ears as wound a bad guy.”

He didn’t look happy about my refusal, but he didn’t insist. I appreciated that.

In the end, we didn’t gaze longingly at each other, and we certainly didn’t kiss. We said goodbye, and Russell and Bloodshedder turned and began making their way edgewise, the crowd of pedestrians parting before them like water flowing around a large rock in a stream.

I watched them go for a moment before turning and heading centerwise.

I had no idea what to do next.

 

Nod is a damn big place. Shadow Watch officers use their wispers to communicate, but we can also use them like GPSs to get a fix on each other’s location. But I didn’t have my wisper anymore, and I doubted Jinx did either. His captors would’ve relieved him of it, just as they’d taken mine. Bloodshedder might’ve been able to help me track down Jinx, but she was off helping Russell find Shocktooth.

And the fact that Jinx had been kidnapped – or maybe I should say clown-napped – by a group of black-suited men and women who, in their Night Aspects, were mostly likely clowns too, would be no help in locating him. The scary clown is a common nightmare archetype, and Nod is crawling with the greasepaint-covered bastards. They’re so ubiquitous, they’re practically the nightmare-world version of pigeons. So I couldn’t simply walk around asking people if they’d seen a clown lately. All they’d do is laugh at me and walk away.

I wandered through the streets, garish neon signs screaming for my attention: PWN Shop, Self-Surgery Supplies, Brainswapping, You Bet Your Genitals, 3000 Proof Alcohol, Janglers, Adrenalynn’s, Live Necrophilia… In the Cesspit, it doesn’t take long to grow numb to the sleaze, and when that happens, the signs become merely words.

There was another sign, too, one that hung above most businesses. NO VESTIES. Vesties are Incubi who try to look, dress, and act as much like humans as possible. Some even go so far as to have cosmetic surgery with M-enhanced instruments, especially in the case of the more inhuman-appearing Incubi.

Vesties – a term that’s a play on transvestite – believe that since humans created them, humans are therefore a superior life form: the exact opposite of what the Lords of Misrule believe. Because of this belief, they try to emulate humans in the hope of becoming more like them. Most Incubi despise vesties, although Jinx doesn’t seem to think anything about them one way or the other. Because of his Shadow Watch uniform, some Incubi tease him about being a vestie, though. The resulting violence is always fun to watch.

At one point in my wanderings, I approached the mouth of a particularly dark and ominous alley. Normally, I give alleys a wide berth, especially in the Cesspit, but I was running on fumes and not thinking straight, and I walked too close to the alley’s entrance.

A hand the color and consistency of smoke emerged from the alley’s gloom and grabbed my arm. Its touch was cold as winter ice, and despite its insubstantial appearance, the hand fastened on me with an iron grip.

As I was yanked into the alley, a single word screamed through my mind:
Fader!

There are a lot of dangers in Nod, especially for humans, but Faders are among the most dangerous because they don’t discriminate between humans and Incubi. They desperately need life force, and they aren’t picky about where they get it. Faders are Incubi whose Ideators have died, leaving them alone and unbonded.

Once they come into full existence, Incubi don’t necessarily need to remain connected to their creators to survive. But some become so strongly bonded to their Ideators that when their humans die, these Incubi simply fade away to nothing. The process can take a long time. Years, sometimes decades. But in the end, Faders vanish, never to be seen again.

Unless they can find someone and steal their life energy to stave off the inevitable. Incubus or human, it doesn’t matter. Any life energy will do, and tonight this particular Fader had chosen to feed on me.

The Fader dragged me into the alley, and although I pulled and twisted, I couldn’t get the damn thing to release me. With my free hand, I drew my M-blade and tried to gut the thing, but the Fader caught hold of my forearm, stopping me. It shoved my arm backward until I could feel the bones grind. My fingers sprang open, and the M-blade fell to the ground.

I was out of weapons. If I’d had my trancer, I could’ve blasted the damn thing into oblivion. Hell, if I’d had my wisper, I could’ve activated its holo display. Faders are creatures of darkness, and the light would’ve driven it off. But now I didn’t have anything other than my clothes and my body. But this
was
an alley, and not just any alley, but a
Cesspit
alley.

Faders only have so much energy – which is why they need to feed on others, of course – so I fought to pull both of my arms free, forcing the Fader to expend more energy to hold onto me. By necessity, Faders are loathe to waste energy, and so the creature let go of one of my arms, and continued to pull me deeper into the alley, where it could feed on me without interruption.

I continued to resist as it dragged me, and I bent down in a half crouch, and with my free hand reached toward the ground. My fingers brushed all manner of debris. My eyes hadn’t adjusted to the darkness in the alley yet, so I couldn’t see what I was touching, which was a very good thing. Too many of the items I touched were wet and spongy, and – if the horrid smells were any indication – I really didn’t want to know what sort of trash I was fondling.

I wasn’t searching for anything in particular, just something that I might be able to use against the Fader to wound or at least startle it. I didn’t need to kill it. I just needed it to let go of me long enough so I could haul ass out of there.

And I had to hurry. Already I could feel the icy-burning sensation of the Fader’s touch spreading into the rest of my arm. It would take only a few minutes for the Fader to drain all of my life force, but the problem was that I’d soon become too weak to fight back, and then I’d be little more than a semiconscious rag doll, and the Fader could consume the rest of my energy without difficulty. If I was going to survive, I had to do something within the next few seconds, while I still had the strength to act.

I continued fumbling in the trash as the Fader pulled me even deeper into the alley. The burning-cold suffused most of my arm now, and I was starting to feel light-headed. I didn’t have much time left.

My fingers then brushed against a small disk-shaped object and reflexively curled around it. I could tell by the feel that it was an M-unit. Someone must’ve had dropped this yoonie coin while passing through the alley. Or, more likely, it had been dropped during a mugging. Either way, someone else’s loss was my gain. It wasn’t an M-blade – or Russell’s rapier, for that matter – but it would do.

My vision had adapted to a degree, and I could make out the Fader’s shape. Not that there was much to see. Faders have no distinct features, and there’s no way to tell what manner of Incubus they used to be. They’re humanoid forms that seem sculpted from grayish-black smoke, although they’re solid enough. I had no idea if the creature possessed a mouth anymore, but I was about to find out. I jammed the yoonie toward the Fader’s head in what I gauged was the general direction of the thing’s mouth, but the coin struck the lower half of the Fader’s featureless face and lodged there. I shoved with all my strength – all I had left, that is – and the coin went in all the way.

The Fader stopped pulling me, but it didn’t let go of my arm. The creature stood motionless for several seconds, and I feared that my gamble wasn’t going to pay off. But then the Fader began shaking all over. Only a little at first, but then more violently. From the center of the thing’s body – where its stomach had once been – multicolored light began to glow as the Fader tried to absorb the coin’s Maelstrom energy.

A significant amount of power is concentrated in a single M-unit, and the Fader’s body was doing its damnedest to metabolize all that energy, and failing. The multicolored light blazing from the creature’s core continued to grow brighter, and for an instant, the Fader’s smoke-colored body resolved into a more defined shape: an Incubus with a ram’s head that sported huge curving horns. It looked at me with sorrowful eyes, and then there was an explosion of light, and I felt the Fader’s grip cease.

I managed to turn my head just before the burst of light, but even so, I still saw spots. What I didn’t see, though, was the Fader. It was gone, a victim of terminal indigestion.

As I staggered out of the alley, the feeling began to return to my arm, and I vowed to always carry a few extra yoonies with me from now on. Just in case.

 

Afterward, I wandered the Cesspit for a time, shaken and weak from my encounter with the Fader. I knew I needed to figure out a way to find Jinx, but the more I tried to focus my thoughts, the more they scattered, flying away from me like a flock of frightened birds. My body was weary, but more importantly, my brain felt like it was wrapped in molasses-soaked cotton. Bad enough I was a human walking alone in the Cesspit, but I was far from my sharpest – as getting caught by the Fader testified. The way I felt, a blindfolded toddler could’ve gotten the drop on me.

My Shadow Watch uniform provided me a certain measure of protection, but without a fully charged trancer and my M-blade – and especially without Jinx – it was only a matter of time before I ended up dead, my corpse discarded in a back alley like so much trash. I really could’ve used a hit or three of rev right then, but when I pulled out my inhaler and tried to suck on it, I found it empty. I realized I’d wasted the last of it outside Perchance to Dream, when I shot it into Jinx’s face.

I was so angry at myself. What the hell had I been thinking? How could I have been so goddamned
stupid?
I threw the spent inhaler to the ground and kept going.

As I walked, the Cesspit’s finest street entrepreneurs called out to me, urging me to stop for a moment to examine their wares. I was offered the usual. Tickets to live competitive vivisections. Bizarrely shaped devices that might’ve been sex toys, torture instruments, or both. Bits of bone reputed to have belonged to the Children of the First Dreamer. But then I heard what I’d been waiting for, at least subconsciously.

“Hey, girl! You look like you’re almossst dead on your feet! How’sss about a little rev?”

It was a feminine voice, soft, barely above a whisper. And yet somehow, I heard it above the ever-present din of the Cesspit, as if she was standing right next to me and speaking in my ear. I stopped walking and turned in the direction of the voice.

An Incubus stood on the sidewalk in front of a Scarbucks. It was a sad testament to my current state of awareness that I’d walked right by and hadn’t noticed her. Even by Incubus standards, she was a strange-looking creature. Her form was humanoid, but she appeared to be made of hundreds of serpents, all intertwined to create her body. As I walked back to her, I saw she had no discernible facial features, and her fingers were made of writhing snakes protruding from her wrists, tiny tongues flicking the air and beady black eyes staring at me coldly as I approached.

“I would
not
want to be inside the head of the person who dreamed you up,” I said.