Poisoned Pearls (5 page)

But was it really a normal person coming to see him? Or a
government agent, pretending to be normal?

The mattress where Hunter slept was an obvious decoy. Anyone
with any sense would know that wasn’t Hunter in the bed.

Whoever was hunting Hunter didn’t have any sense. Or at
least pretended really well.

The blue shadows bled into blacks as the figure drew closer.

Then the figure called Hunter’s name softly.

Hunter stayed where he was, hidden by the shadows, up on the
shelf that he’d built. That he could spring off of, landing on his assailant.
Always better to have a height advantage.

None of the regular burglars ever thought to look
up
. They’d come before, thinking they
could easily rob Hunter of his stash of drugs.

Or maybe it wasn’t a robber, but another government agent.
They’d come before too, trying to get Hunter into
housing,
claiming they could
help
.

He knew that was just shorthand for another type of training
camp. He was tired of being their guinea pig.

“Hunter, it’s Josh,” the knife-long shadow called.

Hunter knew a Josh. The weight and height looked the
same—short and round—particularly accounting for winter coat and
boots. The voice sounded familiar, too.

However, Hunter had been tricked before, tricked by false
dreams and foul assassins, so he stayed silent on his shelf, coiled tightly, ready
to spring.

Josh spoke again. “Hunter, there’s been a death. A funny
one. I came to report, Sir.”

Hunter didn’t allow himself to move or nod. That was for
when he was having a normal conversation, in a normal place and time.

This was not a normal place or time.

And why hadn’t his pre-cog senses told him that there would
be a death? His abilities weren’t failing him further, were they?

“Look, Hunter, I know you’re hidden away in this room
someplace. I’m tired and fucking cold so I’m just going to go over and sit next
to the door. When you’re ready to hear my report, you can come over and do
that.”

The Josh-shadow withdrew from Hunter’s mattress, then did
exactly as he said he would. He walked over next to the door and sat with his
back to the wall, legs out. He blew against his hands—the heat for the
room only came through in a trickle, and only enough so that Hunter wouldn’t
freeze to death at night.

The person’s breath puffed out, white with blue sparks. He
patted his hands against his arms, as if trying to keep himself warm or wake
his fingers up.

It was a vulnerable action, admitting the power of the cold.

Confirmation flooded Hunter, like sunlight bleeding across a
snow-covered hill. This was Josh. Weak. Unconscious. He’d wanted to be part of
the big battle, but he wasn’t a true blood brother. He shared the
Ghost Tripper
drugs, but he didn’t see,
either.

While Josh moved his legs up and down, trying to keep
circulation and feeling and warmth in them, Hunter flowed off the shelf.
Staying in the shadows, he went to the far wall, opposite his cot, then finally
approached Josh.

Josh still didn’t see Hunter and jumped when he appeared in
front of him.

“Shit, Hunter. Why do you have to do that every time?”

Hunter shrugged. It wasn’t really a question that needed
answering. It was part of who he was, as automatic as jumping up on the shelf
to give himself an advantage. Like always thinking in three dimensions, being
aware of the exits and entrances of any room, knowing how to defend himself
against any and all who were there, ghost and human.

He’d not only trained, but been
altered
to do this. That’s what the ghosts had told him. The ones
from the future advanced enough that they could cross into the past.

The only thing Hunter still missed was a blood brother, his
true companion.

The ghosts couldn’t tell him if or when he’d find him.

Josh struggled to get his feet under him and stand. Hunter
watched him critically. Josh either needed to lose weight or gain muscle.
Probably both. Hunter wasn’t about to suggest that to him, though. That would
make Josh think he might actually be able to fight. And win.

“You said you had something to report?” Hunter asked coldly.

“Sir, yes, Sir,” Josh said. “Kyle Magnusson was killed in an
alley behind Chinaman Joe’s Good Luck Parlor.”

That didn’t seem very important. “And?” Hunter prompted.

“Police can’t figure out what killed him,” Josh said.

“It’s probably a new drug,” Hunter said dismissively.

Josh shook his head. “Post-cog on the case said no. Said
it’s something different.”

“How do you know what this post-cog said? What the police
are doing?” Hunter asked.

Had Josh been bought out?

When Josh had first contacted Hunter, asking to be trained
for the final, big battle, Hunter had followed him for days, verifying that
Josh was who he said he was: a barista at a local coffee-shop chain, wearing
ridiculous moose antlers frequently when he opened the shop in the morning.

“So, I told you, Mike, the cute cop, keeps coming into the
shop?” Josh said. “I copied all his radio frequencies. So I can now listen in
on everything the cops are saying when they’re in range.”

“Good job,” Hunter said automatically, hiding his immediate
recoil.

How stupid did the government agency Josh worked for think
Hunter was? A barista wouldn’t have access to that kind of tech.

Josh was a plant. A government spy under deep cover. Here to
bring Hunter back into the program. And Hunter hadn’t seen it.

“We need to go investigate,” Hunter said. “But first, we
need some supplies.” He flowed away from Josh, stripping as he went. He could
wear the same clothes he slept in and just add layers, but there was something
humanizing about the ritual of changing clothes just to go to sleep. It soothed
him, kept him in this place and time, particularly when his dreams soured.

Josh’s soft chuckle came right on cue. “Damn, you
gotta
teach me that sometime.”

Hunter was never sure what Josh meant. How to move and flow
through a space? How to practice each movement for even the most mundane tasks
until there was never any wasted effort? Josh had told Hunter more than once
how graceful he was. Hunter didn’t know how to teach that. It seemed to have
come with the training, first at P-camp, then in the Army, then with the ghosts
and beyond.

It took less than a minute before Hunter was ready, a second
minute to lace up his extra-strong boots. “Let’s go,” he said as he flipped off
the gas heater and put on his dark glasses.

“Dude, it’s still night out,” Josh pointed out. “Sun won’t
show her face for hours. If then.”

Hunter shrugged. Nights like tonight, or mornings, still had
sharp edges. Better to be protected.

Nothing was safe. Always just a case of safe enough.
Particularly with the enemy so close at hand, with Hunter’s inner circle
compromised.

For now.

One of the problems with drug dealers was that they made too
much damned money. When there was demand, they could always be counted on for
supply.

That meant that instead of a shithole apartment downtown, or
even a cheap place off Lake Street,
Csaba
had a whole
fucking house in northern Minneapolis, in one of those neighborhoods that was
trying to pick itself up but hadn’t made it yet.

And I had no way of getting there on my own. It was three in
the morning. Buses weren’t running, and I knew a cab wouldn’t drop me off in
that neighborhood.

Plus, I didn’t own a car. Too damned expensive to gas up,
fix, and insure. And I sure as hell didn’t have anyplace to put it. Parking
downtown was a bitch at best.

However. Kyle had a car.

I knew it was a stupid idea even as I headed toward his
place, walking quickly through the empty streets of the warehouse district. All
the streetlights had gone to zombie-blinking mode, like the start of the end of
the world. I didn’t even smoke as I walked. The cold had settled into
insta
-freeze. Even out of the wind, my hands would have
gotten frostbite in about two minutes without my gloves on.

Kyle lived south of downtown, between
Loring
Park and Uptown. Not in one of those new
highrises
,
but one of the few houses that had survived and hadn’t been torn down yet for
more new development. The place was a dump and the landlord a slumlord at best.
He’d probably sell off Kyle’s stuff if his family decided not to bother to collect
it. Maybe even go through and steal what he could before they got there.

I walked down the back of the block first. It was more
sterile than I’d remembered. Most neighborhoods had trees in the boulevard,
between the sidewalk and the street. This block didn’t. Instead, the buildings
rose up from just a few feet back from the sidewalk, the cold trapped in the
concrete and held there, making me feel as if I were walking inside a
commercial fridge.

The warehouse district didn’t have much in the way of greenery,
either, but at least the buildings had some sort of character. This
neighborhood was “modern” ’70s, all cinderblock and emotionless.

Just after the corner stood another one of the houses that
had survived. The yard had the barest cover of snow, looking like a frozen
wasteland. One old tree still grew in the front, but most of the limbs had been
cut from it. Was it actually alive? Or just a wasted hulk?

I slowed as I neared the next corner, looking to my left,
down the street.

Didn’t see any cop cars. No lights flashing.

Either they’d already been to Kyle’s place and gone, or
they’d decided the case wasn’t important enough to work through the night.

I didn’t know if that meant my luck was finally changing, or
if taking Kyle’s car would turn out to be the most stupid thing I could do as
far as the cops were concerned.

Didn’t matter. I needed to go hunt down
Csaba
,
see if he knew anything about Helen, or the other girl, Lizzie, or even Kyle.
Maybe he knew if there had been any other killings—he’d pay attention to
that sort of thing because that would mean fewer customers.

Kyle’s hunk of junk was sitting right in front of his house.
Must have been lucky whenever he’d parked it—it was normally impossible
to find a place to park in his neighborhood.

The car was an ancient, blue, four-door Ford Taurus, a rust
bucket like all the old cars in Minnesota due to the salt thrown on the roads
in the winter. Kyle kept replacement insurance on it, along with a spare set of
keys underneath an old coffee can on the front porch that also served as an
ashtray. He’d joked that he wasn’t so much begging people to steal his car, but
that if it happened, well, he was covered.

Despite the cold, the car started on the second try, turning
over and revving up, disturbing the quiet of the neighborhood. I blasted the
heater and defroster, shivering as the cold wind blew on me. How long before it
blew warm? Knowing my luck, I’d already be up north before the actual heat
kicked in.

I didn’t stay too long, though, warming the car up. Didn’t
want the cops coming by, wondering what I was doing in Kyle’s car.

Particularly since my driver’s license was expired.

The road was slick, and Kyle had shit tires. I got the car
out of the cramped neighborhood—even with cars parked only on one side
and minimal snow, it was still tight—and onto the freeway, heading north.
Only a few drivers were out—and the few drivers who were out were semis
and taxis. The road looked bleached white from the salt, despite the orange
glow of the freeway lights.

Too soon, I got off the easy four-lane and back into the
twisting sprawl of the city streets. Fortunately, most of northern Minneapolis
had been done on a grid, so the main streets weren’t too bad.

The side streets were a mess, though. I parked blocks before
I needed to, preferring to walk, even though the cold bit into me like a knife.

The neighborhood here was all houses, boxy and rundown. The
yards held old cars, discarded washing machines, and snowy lumps that wouldn’t
be identifiable until spring. Naked trees lined the boulevard, stoically
carrying their sprinkling of snow and ice.

A couple of houses bucked the trend—one had strings of
bright red-and-green Christmas lights circling the porch, another had a tree
decorated in white lights and silver garlands. There weren’t any ostentatious
displays like what I remembered from growing up in Minnetonka, with Santa and
his whole fucking workshop done in blowup dolls, or the creepy snowmen in
globes.

It was easy to tell
Csaba’s
place:
all the lights were on, the party still rolling along, people hanging out on
the front porch. The music wasn’t too loud, though. Had the cops already
visited that night? Or was
Csaba
still trying
desperately for some sort of respectability?

Even from outside, through the cold, the sweet scent of pot
lay thick in the air. Two skanky girls shared a bowl on a sagging couch that
took up most of the left side of the screened-in front porch, while a solitary
guy watched them on the other side.

No one stopped me from opening the screen door and walking
in. None of them even looked up.

The inside of the house was nicer than I expected. To the
right was a squared-off, dark wood staircase going up. Someone had tied a big
red-and-white-striped bow around the square end of the staircase banister. The
place stank of acidic chemicals and spilled beer, but the wooden floors looked
clean and there wasn’t garbage piled everywhere.

Going straight in from the door was a narrow hallway. At
some point in the ’70s they’d decided to put red velvet wallpaper on the
hallway walls. Half a dozen fake candles lined the floor and reflected the
browns and reds darkly, the electric flames wavering in syncopation.

Underneath the staircase, a door stood propped open. I knew
that would go into the basement dungeon—another place I didn’t want to
go.

I turned left instead, entering the living room. Long tubes
of black fluorescent lights hung over the windows that looked over the front
porch, above the couch where an orgy seemed to be going on. I tried not to look—too
much white-boy butt on display.

Through the archway to the right was a table covered in what
had probably been a pretty good spread earlier, judging from the pizza boxes,
and the half a rotisserie chicken that remained—hell, there was even a
veggie tray. Plus bag after bag of potato chips, mostly empty.

I snagged a salt-and-vinegar chip as I passed by. There was
a dark-haired girl curled around a bottle, sleeping in the corner, her dress
pulled up and her panties showing.

Good thing I wasn’t really Mother Teresa or I might have
tried to save her—wake her ass up and get her out of there before one of
the boys decided “asleep” meant “yes.”

But I had find
Csaba
first.

Then maybe I’d come back for her.

The kitchen was a full-on disaster area. All the counters
were covered with bottles of booze, glasses empty and not, as well as a glass
bowl full of brightly colored pills in every color of the rainbow. Overflowing
ashtrays filled the cheap white linoleum table in the eating nook, spilling
onto the floor. At least three large black garbage bags were stuffed full of
something that reeked. Vomit lay in a puddle next to the back door.

I knew it was just a matter of time before all that chaos
rolled out into the rest of the living space. I’d lived in places like this,
before. When I’d been on the street. Crash pads, though they were barely
adequate for that.

Gave me the willies just walking around.

Csaba
was nowhere to be seen. He
might fuck in public, but I doubted he’d share a girl like the two (three?) in
the living room. That meant he was either upstairs, fucking in one of the
bedrooms, or downstairs, playing bondage games.

I didn’t like either option. Still, I opted for upstairs
first.

I’d just reached the first landing when this scared-looking,
skinny white guy came barreling down the stairs. He was dressed in combat
fatigues—either scrounged or he was a vet. I didn’t know if he was high
or what. I pressed myself against the cold glass of the window on the landing
to get out of his way.

I needn’t have bothered. He flew past me, taking the stairs
three at a time, weirdly graceful. He bolted right out of the house, as if his
ass were on fire.

Didn’t make me any happier to be going upstairs.

At the top of the stairs, I finally recognized someone I
knew—Dusty,
Csaba’s
second in command. He had
that whole James-Dean-bad-boy slouch going on, leaning against the wall to my
left. All five doors in the hallway were closed.

I didn’t have to guess what he was standing guard for. The
rhythmic slapping sound coming from the door he stood next to told me
everything I needed to know.

Dusty’s
curly hair was probably as
blond as Kyle’s had been, only I didn’t think it came out of a bottle. He had
bad acne across his nose and cheeks, making his face red and scarred. It stood
out in the half-light coming from the dim bulb hanging from the ceiling, like
some kind of weird mask, while his chin and mouth disappeared into the dark.

“
Whatcha
want?” he asked, hitching
up the pants that were belted across his butt, drawing my attention to his navy
blue silk boxers.

I didn’t know if it was a good thing or a bad thing that he
seemed to know me.

“Who was that racing down the stairs? What happened to him?”
I asked instead.

“Hunter.” Dusty chuckled and shook his head. “No idea what
happened to him, what he saw. Guy lives with ghosts.”

That made him either a junkie, or a failed pre-cog, or both.

“
Csaba
around?” I asked, hopeful,
since Dusty had been nice enough to tell me about the other guy.

“Downstairs,” Dusty said, his voice going neutral. “You
looking to score?”

“
Naw
, special home delivery,” I
lied.

I worked in a sex & toy shop. Claiming to have goodies
with me had gotten me into more than one “exclusive” party.

“Freak,” Dusty said, shaking his head and crossing his arms over
his chest.

I knew when I wasn’t wanted. I still blew him a kiss before
I turned and walked back down the stairs. What can I say? I really don’t know
when to stop sometimes.

So it was down into the dungeon for me.

***

I did have some kind of luck, though I was never sure what
kind. Since I worked in a sex & toy shop, there wasn’t much I hadn’t seen
kink-wise from reviewing the porn videos, or looking through the catalogues,
trying to figure out which titles I should order for the store.

So as I crept down the steep, twisted wooden staircase
leading to the basement, I wasn’t shocked, horrified, or even turned on by what
I saw.

It wasn’t the fanciest dungeon setup I’d ever seen. The
walls were painted an incongruous sunflower yellow. Sconces held electrified
candles, all set to dim, every three feet or so—atmospheric, I suppose.
The floor was concrete and I bet there was a drain somewhere so it could be
hosed down.

On one side of the big basement room stood a simple wooden
cross with a voluptuous girl tied to it, her playmate/torturer wearing
electrodes strapped to his fingers so arching sparks of blue lightning kept
prickling her skin and making her writhe in pain. On the other side was a
vaulting horse with a skinny boy strapped down to it, a woman in a knee-length,
tight red leather dress whipping him slowly with a matching red leather
flogger.

Men stood in packs, watching the two shows, their dicks out,
stroking themselves or each other. When I reached the bottom of the stairs I
saw, in another corner, a pair of blindfolded girls making out with each other,
sharing a pocket rocket vibrator, passing it back and forth.

The smell of smoke and the musk of sex lay thick in the air.
It was as bad as the booths for the peep show that I regularly cleaned out with
bleach.

I took two steps, then stopped.
Ew
.
The floor was sticky. I wasn’t about to look too closely to figure out what had
made it sticky. I might have to wash the soles of my boots. I sure as hell
wasn’t about to touch anything.

Just past the bottom of the staircase,
Csaba
sat on his slick, black leather couch. I figured it was easier to get the
stains out of that than some kind of fabric, no matter how well it had been
Scotchgarded
. He nodded his fat head in time with the deep
bass playing in the background, some rap song where the words had been
scrambled and just the beat remained.