Orphan of Mythcorp (27 page)

From the
Mythcorp Trilogy
I knew he was old pals with the
two Mythicons I meant to recruit. I was banking on his presence
persuading them to leave their duties as Wards of Vera
City.

At the edge of school property, a forest line
concealing a darkness I did not want to enter, I paused and glanced
around, trying to pick Malthus out of the shadows.

“
Will you come in with me when I enter
Vera City?” I asked in a loud and shaky voice.

Rustling. A few ticks later a paper
airplane zoomed out of the brush to my right and landed at my feet.
I unfolded it, read:
I can, but won’t. Tell
them if they don’t come, Knox is dead.

I froze.

‘
What are you waiting for, an armed
guide?’ Castor asked. ‘Go on, Nancy pants.’

One last glance at Philicity High and then I
stepped into the forest, darkness be damned. The presence of my
spooks was a relief, but though they shone with their own
otherworldly light, they did not guide me or provide an illuminated
path.

‘
Why are we going this way?’ Marie
asked, dancing straight through a skinny maple.

“
From the maps Izzy gave me, I’m pretty
sure this forest leads into Lincoln Park, and from there it’s only
a couple blocks to Vera City. I think.”

‘
I don’t know what you’re talking
about, you little crud-muncher,’ Castor snorted. ‘It’s more like
six blocks to Vera City from the other side of Lincoln Park. Plus,
you go this way you’ll have to cross the old
87
^th
Street Bridge over the
Tonawanda.’ He turned to Marie. ‘What kind of a moron did we get
stuck with here? Oh, that’s right—the bastard son of a
moron.’

I stopped beside a birch and leaned close to
Marie. After making sure that Castor wasn’t listening, I asked her,
“Is he right?”

But the spook was not paying attention, which
was really insulting, considering she was supposed to be haunting
me. I asked her again. ‘Shh,’ she answered. ‘Do you see that?
Malthus is following us. I remember him. The devil cut off his
right hand and so he forged a new one.’

Ugh. No help at all.

Her Royal Highness suddenly bamfed into
existence behind Castor. Like always she laid her creepy silver
peepers on me, just watching. Being on the receiving end of the
Evil Eye from a spook is no picnic. It makes you wish you were
intangible so her look might go right through you and strike the
dude standing behind you.

Thunder boomed overhead as I brooded over my
spook-predicament. I hadn’t taken anything in almost ten hours, a
lifetime for an addict—and for me too. I fingered a B-drop.

‘
That’s right,’ Castor said, ‘turn to
your drugs. That’ll make everything all peachy. Hey, here’s an
idea, why don’t you take them all now and save yourself the
trouble. You’re just going to end up dead on some cruddy floor
somewhere anyway, yet another reeking corpse fouling the world with
its stink.’

“
Go feed some piranhas,” I snapped. It
probably sounded less snappy than I meant, since my words were not
punctuated by booming thunder as I’d hoped they might
be.

‘
Oh, pardon me, precious, for speaking
the truth,’ Castor said. ‘I should’ve known a delicate little
flower like you wouldn’t be able to handle it.’ Castor glowered at
me, ignoring the young pine he was gliding through. ‘I just can’t
help but wonder, what’s going to happen to me when you finally do
get snuffed? Will I get stuck following another retard around, or
will I simply cease to exist, an ignoble end to a bitter,
soul-draining afterlife?’

“
God, you are so negative.”

Thunder bellowed as I sighed and trudged on.
The forest canopy was thick enough to protect me from the brunt of
the downpour, but I could hear the rain attacking the tree tops,
like machine gun fire, trying to squeeze through and drench me. A
smidge bit did make it through and the drizzle chilled me to the
bones.

Twenty minutes later I crossed the wooden
bridge and found myself in Lincoln Park. A kooky monument stood in
the center, looking dead now in its green skin of corroded copper.
I hobbled past this sad effigy. Made my way to the gates through
which, only a few weeks earlier, Nimrod had deposited Ash. I paused
at the very spot where the two kooks had conversed. What knowledge
had the Hunter shared with Ash, what could he have said to convince
the shrimp to try and reopen Mythcorp?

After waiting at the light off Beta Circle
and Lincoln Park, I splashed across the street. My white shoes were
now the shade of crap-stains and my socks held enough slop to water
the Botanical Gardens. While waiting for a taxi to show up, I
yelled at Marie over the rain.

“
Where’s Vera City?”

She hesitated and for once not because she
was distracted by a cute squirrel or some zipperdick she recognized
from her pre-buggered days. “Come on, Marie,” I said. “You know we
have to do this—

“
Thanks a lot!” I screamed at the
driver who’d just splashed me.

At the sound of another car approaching, I
cringed. “All right, Marie, one last chance. If you don’t tell me
where Vera City is right now, I’m going to pop this B-drop, and
then it’s off to Limbo for you until I dry out.” I brandished the
candy/drug. “Well?”

‘
You won’t,’ she whispered. ‘You need
me.’ At ‘me’ Marie leapt forward into the street, weaving among the
cars like the dang spook she was.

“
Fine,” I shrugged. “Here I go. You
see? I’m popping it. I can already see you fading. I hope you enjoy
the empty boringness of Limbo, because I’ve got a whole stash of
these now and I’m going to keep—”

‘
Oh screw this,’ Castor spoke up. ‘It’s
halfway down Beta Circle, between
36
^th
and
37
^th
.’

“
Thank you, Castor,” I said, and
promptly popped the B-drop.

Marie zoomed up to me, making me stumble
backwards. She tried to sock me in the gut. When that didn’t work,
she smiled.

“
Oh crap,” I groaned as Marie attempted
to possess me. I danced around trying to avoid her. That’s when the
taxi pulled up beside me.

As I jumped in, Marie drifted into the cab
for one last try at the old possession bit. I shimmied over as she
began to fade. Outside in the rain Castor shrugged and faded too.
Soon they were both out of sight. I relaxed. When I opened my
peepers, it was to the sight of a grizzled cabbie goggling me.

“
Oh, sorry. Please take me to
One-Hundred and First and Beta.”

He stared for another ten ticks, probably
just to make me uncomfortable, and then turned around and pulled
away from the curb. “You a runaway?” he asked a little while
later.

“
Kind of.”

“
There’s nothing on One-Oh-One but
dollar stores and pizza places. You got a place to
stay?”

Was he coming on to me? I shivered and then
shivered again, the second time because I was cold and wet. “I’m
meeting my uncle at Pontillo’s Pizzeria.”

“
What’s his name?”

What was this, an interrogation? “Uncle
Castor.” I set my elbow on the window and pressed my ear against my
hand, hoping Nosy Cabbie would get the drift.

It wasn’t until we pulled up to the
curb on 101
^st
and Beta that I
realized I had no way inside. Last time, Miss Anne Thrope had
helped me enter. But now? Big Dominic wouldn’t let me in without a
member of the City. I plopped down on the top step, assuming the
Thinker position. “What would Ash do?” I wondered aloud. He’d have
a way inside, the clever little zipperdick.

The doojee was coursing through my veins now,
so that was dynamite. But it had banished my spooks, so I didn’t
have anyone to give me any advice. It’s a real slap in the face
realizing how helpless you are without your friends. I sat there,
drenched and high but humbled by my blunder, and all the while Ash
was back at PHS, plotting his way into Mythcorp.

A flabby man in a knit cap staggered down the
street towards the stairs, spotted me, and then walked by. A few
moments later he returned. Seeing me still there, he walked past
the steps again. On his third trek the man seemed to grow a pair.
He stopped, head hanging limp as if he’d lost his top few vertebrae
and found the sidewalk remarkably fascinating.

“
Wutuduinhere?”

“
Excuse me?” I asked.

This time he raised his head. I wished he
hadn’t; his face was all pockmarked and it looked like he had
traded his teeth for asparagus tips. “What are you doing here? Who
are you?”

“
Why?” trying not to look at those
unholy teeth.

Flabby grunted. “Do you even know what’s
inside?” He was getting all jittery now and wheezing through those
flimsy teeth. I kept expecting green dentures to plop onto the
puddles. I dug inside my pockets. “If you let me come in with you,”
I said “and tell Dominic there that I’m your son, I’ll give you—”
yanking out some bills, I sighed “—fifteen bucks.”

Flabby man snorted and trudged up the steps
past me. He knocked on the door. I stood, intending to sneak in
behind him, but then plopped back down when it became clear I was a
head taller. The smidge metal slot situated peeper-high in the
door, slid open. Dark eyes peered out at Flabby. Words were spoken,
locks were unlocked, and Flabby was swallowed by Vera City.

I was alone again.

Rubbing my temples produced no answers. I
couldn’t think. Everything was grand and blurry. Lightning shivered
down in the distance, striking the top of one of the sky-ticklers
in Virgil’s Nave. In the sudden flash I caught the outline of
Malthus across the street, making me cringe. As thunder boomed
something whizzed by my face and splattered against the door. The
whizzing object stuck fast to the metal—and it was ticking.

“
Holy crap!”

I leapt off the stoop in a slam-bang rush,
landing on the sidewalk in a heap. I struggled to rise, cursing in
pain. Even with the doojee, it was too much. I couldn’t run, at
least not for a few hundred ticks. Behind me the sticky bomb was
ticking away, counting its last moments with stoic
indifference.

Crawling-crawling-crawling.

A magnificent force pummeled me. I
thought,
this is it, I’m totally buggered
now.

But the force lingered and neither
increased nor decreased. Rain splattered against my face and
squeezed into my peepers.
I’m moving,
hovering.
Was this what death was like? Did everything
slow down to allow you time to ponder your demise? What a megabomb
slap in the face.
Let it end,
I prayed.

But when it didn’t end, I figured I might as
well pay attention. Wind and rain blasted my face, and something
gripped me around my waist with a vice-grip pressure.

KABOOM

“
What the flip?” glancing behind
me.

Fire during a rain storm is an awesome
sight, sure as sure. But did this mean that the explosion had
only
just
happened? Slowly I
guided my peepers from the blast to a spot four feet above me. I
screamed and writhed and cursed, all to no effect. Malthus had me
in his arms (or rather
arm
;
apparently gaunt suckers like me don’t weigh enough to justify
being carried by both arms).

The grip on my body tightened. I forced
myself to take a deep breath and to think. It was difficult with
the drugs coursing through my system, mucking up my noodle, but I
did my best.
Okay, Malthus has saved me
from the blast, which was his doing, and now he is toting me like a
basket of dirty clothes. Where could he be taking me?

“
Where are you taking me?” I asked. It
came out like ‘were you tagging me?’ though.

The big galoot didn’t answer. He didn’t even
slow down.

At least it was dark outside, and with the
rain pouring Malthus probably came off as a rearguard jogging down
the street with me as his gym bag. That was my hope anyway. I
wasn’t ready for death-by-embarrassment.

After a lifetime of this nonsense,
Malthus released me. That is to say, he dropped me onto a
particularly hard slab of pavement. I groaned and writhed and when
I opened my peepers, I was relieved to find Marie dancing beside
Malthus, her white dress twirling, immune to the storm. It was even
nice to see Naked Charlie staring down at me—but not
that
nice.

I set my cane upright and used it to hoist
myself.

“
You almost killed me back
there!”

But then, taking a good look around, I
smiled. “This is the back entrance, isn’t it? Marie, where’s the
door?”

The spook ignored me. Lightning flashed. In
the interval of light, I got a look at Malthus. He was motionless
as a statue and his creepy ability to merge with shadows was a
constant reminder that he was not human.

“
Oh, ah,” I stammered, “I was talking
to Marie. Do you remember her? She used to pal around with
Knox?”

To my astonishment, the demon lifted his
prosthetic hand and pointed directly at the spook. As if to make
his point crystal clear, he proceeded to point at Naked Charlie and
Castor in turn.

“
You can see them? Wow.”

He shifted his mondo arm. At first I expected
to see another spook, maybe Her Royal Highness, but instead,
following his direction, I saw a wall. It was nice as far as walls
go; solid red brick not yet old enough to have decayed into an
image of rotting teeth.