shadowrun 40 The Burning Time (3 page)

Trouble watched him go, wanting to run after him but knowing she had to respect Talon’s wishes. If only you would let somebody inside, Talon, she thought. If only you’d let me in.

The alley was filled with overflowing dumpsters and garbage cans, the shapes ominous in the barely lit darkness. Talon had barely entered when he heard the sound of muffled laughter coming from the darkness ahead. He paused, suddenly alert, one hand hovering over the pistol holstered under his jacket.

A trio of figures, two humans and an ork, stepped out from behind a dumpster. All wore beat-up leathers covered with chrome studs and chains, and their hair was shaved into patterns, gelled into spikes, and colored a bizarre rainbow. They looked like teenagers. The ork stood head and shoulders above his friends, but one of the humans was the obvious leader. He had pale green eyes—implants of some kind—that glowed faintly, with no iris or pupil visible. The three of them were giggling, probably high on something.

"Hey, man," the lead human said, snickering like he’d just heard the funniest joke in the world, "where do you think you’re going?" The three instantly broke up into raucous laughter. Talon noticed that the two humans had closed switchblades in their hands, while the ork held a heavy length of steel chain in his enormous paws.

He sighed deeply. "Kid, I’m in no mood for this. You have exactly five seconds to get out of my way before I accept this as a gift from the gods and take out my frustration by kicking all of your sorry, fragged-up asses."

"Just you, old man?" the lead ganger said with a guffaw.

Talon smiled wickedly. "Naw, wouldn’t want to take on all you wired tough guys myself. I’ll probably get a little help from him," he said, nodding toward the space behind the gangers.

"What are you. . ." the leader began, then trailed off as a deep, growl came from behind him. The giggling stopped as the gangers turned as one to see a large, silver-furred wolf with glowing green eyes emerge from the shadows. A faint, silvery halo surrounded its body, eerie in the darkness. The leader turned back toward Talon, who was surrounded in a similar aura of violet light.

"Holy drek!" the kid said. "He’s a mage! Slot and run!" The turned almost as one and tore down the alley past the wolf, knocking over garbage cans and tripping over themselves in their frantic flight. The wolf started to go after them, but Talon stopped him with a word.

"Let ‘em go, Aracos. They’re not worth the bother."

The wolf stopped and looked back at him. "Humph," he said, speaking directly into Talon’s mind. "I could take a bite or two out of them to teach them a lesson, but they probably wouldn’t taste very good."

The wolf loped over to Talon, his astral aura fading back to invisibility. He looked up at Talon with a lupine expression of concern.

"Are you all right, boss?" Aracos thought to him.

Talon knew he could never hide his inner turmoil from his ally spirit. Aracos could read Talon’s emotions with its astral senses as well as through the psychic connection the two shared. Besides, Talon hadn’t really bothered to mask his feelings.

"Well, I’ve been better," Talon thought to Aracos, "but I don’t want to talk about it now. Let’s just get out of here, okay?"

For a moment, he thought Aracos might say something more, but the spirit gave a distinctively unwolflike shrug and began to shimmer.

"You’re the boss," he thought to Talon. The silvery wolf form melted first into an opalescent mist swirling in the air, then solidified again as a slick red, black, and chrome motorcycle of Japanese make. Chrome traceries in the form of a Celtic knot were painted on one side of the chassis, with the name "Aracos" tricked out in graceful chrome letters beside it.

The bike’s motor was already humming as Talon swung one leg over and mounted up. He pulled on his helmet, and the electronics in its visor lit up the alleyway as bright as day. He revved the bike’s engine and headed into Landsdown Street. Within minutes, he was speeding toward South Boston, as if he could go fast enough to leave behind his troubling visions.

CHAPTER FOUR

Alone in his bed later that night, Talon dreamed.

He was sixteen again, having run away from the Catholic mission in Southie where he grew up. He’d run because of the things he was seeing and feeling, things that weren’t compatible with what the nuns and brothers of the mission taught him. He couldn’t block out the strange haloes of light he saw around people or prevent the bombardment by impressions of the emotions of everyone on the street. It was as if the pain, misery, and unhappiness of twenty generations of people had seeped into the concrete and brick of South Boston, permanently staining it and wrapping everything in a dark pall.

He’d ended up in the Rox, which was even worse. The emotional fog there was so thick you could cut it with a knife. He was too poor to get a datajack even at one of the sleazy chop-shops operating in the back alleys, but he somehow managed to scrape together enough money to buy relief from his misery in the form of little blue tablets called bliss. Nothing else mattered when he was on bliss, but when he stopped, the sensations and the visions got harder and harder to block out.

One day he was huddled in an abandoned building somewhere in the Rox, coming down off his last bliss high and with no money to buy more. It was only a matter of time before he’d be forced to sell his body on the street to get more. It was the only thing of any value he had left. The colors and feelings were already starting to come back, and he could feel his sanity starting to slip away. He didn’t know how much longer he could stand it.

That was when he heard the faint scratching and shuffling sounds of something moving downstairs. He froze at the sound, holding his breath and straining to hear as his sweat turned ice cold. Everyone knew the stories about the ghouls that haunted the abandoned sections of the Rox looking for food. They were said to feed on human corpses, sometimes coming out of the shadows to hunt for fresh meat.

He tried to reach for the switchblade in the pocket of his ragged jeans, but his fingers wouldn’t obey him properly. He couldn’t even get himself to crawl away and hide somewhere. All he could do was lie there, waiting for the inevitable, a small part of him thinking that maybe it would be best if the ghouls found him and put an end to it all. The shuffling drew closer and closer, with the creak of the old stairs heralding their approach.

There were two of them, their gray and hairless flesh stretched tight over their bones. They wore the ragged remains of clothing, probably taken from the bodies of their victims. Their long, bony fingers were tipped with nails like sharp claws. Their faces were also long and gaunt, their thin-lipped mouths filled with sharp, tearing teeth. Their white, blind eyes looked out into nothing. They sniffed the air like animals, smelling Talon’s fear, the scent of prey. As they came closer, stalking him, Talon felt a whimper rise in his throat. One of the ghouls licked his lips with a grayish tongue.

Then light spilled into the room, light even the blind ghouls could see somehow. They recoiled from it as a shining figure appeared, stepping straight through the wall as if it wasn’t there. The figure was tall and handsome, clad in robes of light and holding a long wooden staff in one hand. He raised the other in a gesture of warding and spoke in a voice like thunder.

"STOP!" he commanded. "Leave him alone! He is under my protection."

Talon looked up at the glowing figure and thought of the angels the nuns at the orphanage were always talking about. This being was so beautiful, the light he gave off so protective and kind, although the ghouls didn’t seem to think so.

Recovering from their initial shock, they charged forward, hissing at the light that threatened them. The being was unmoved by their attack. He swung his staff in an arc and struck one of the ghouls a solid blow, sending the thing stumbling back, squealing in pain. The staff flashed again and again, tracing glowing arcs around the man of light, driving the ghouls back until they finally fled from the room. Talon could hear them retreating quickly down the stairs. The figure of light moved closer, bending down to touch him gently on the shoulder. Talon’s vision began to swim and his head to pound like something was threatening to burst out of it.

"Don’t worry," the man of light said. "It’s all right. You’re safe now." Then he began to sing a strange, soothing song, and Talon found himself drifting off to sleep. . .

Then he was in a Stuffer Shack, looking through the racks for some munchies. The magical practice Jase was teaching him always made him hungry. Jase just laughed and said that everything made Talon hungry, but that it was only natural for a young man his age. Still, Talon was coming along well, according to his teacher. In something like a year, he had learned so much from the man who’d rescued him from the ghouls, who’d taught him that the strange sights and feelings weren’t madness but the awakening of Talon’s magical gifts. Jase taught him to control and use those gifts, and so much more. Their relationship deepened, and Talon realized that what he felt for Jase was more than a student’s affection for his teacher or gratitude for Jase saving his life. He loved Jase, and Jase loved him. They lived together on the edge of the Rox in a cramped little apartment, but Talon couldn’t remember a time when he’d felt happier or more hopeful. For him, it was like a dream come true.

Now, engrossed in choosing a snack, Talon merely grunted when Jase said he was going outside to use the public telecom. A few minutes later, Talon heard the roar of motorcycle engines, followed by the chatter of bullets. He instinctively ducked down as gunfire splintered the Stuffer Shack’s front windows, and the cashier and the few other customers also dropped to the floor. When he heard the bikes roaring off, he rushed outside. The ground was covered with broken plastiglass and smashed food containers.

What he saw made him cry out in pain. Jase was lying on the asphalt in a pool of blood. Talon rushed over and lifted Jase’s head off the ground, cradling his blood-spattered body and calling his name again and again, but Jase didn’t answer. Talon looked up as the gangers zoomed away on their motorcycles, laughing. He cried for help, then collapsed, sobbing over the body of the man he loved more than life itself. . .

Then Talon was in the apartment they’d shared. The furniture was pushed back against the wall, and he was on his hands and knees, drawing on the floor with chalk and paint. He slowly built a mandala from lines and geometric shapes. He drew one large circle, with a smaller circle and a triangle inside it. Inscribed around it were runes and symbols of power. He took a small brass brazier and a sharp silver knife from his and Jase’s shared collection of magical tools and lit candles at the four quarters of the circle. Soon, a bed of coals simmered in the brazier, and he sprinkled incense over them. A sweet, heady scent began to fill the room.

Talon made a quick, sharp cut across his palm with the knife. Blood welled up from it, dark and red. Three drops fell and sizzled on the hot coals, followed by three more, and three more after that. Then he bound the cut with a silken cloth and began his chant. He gathered all his anger and grief inside of him as the blood burned with a sharp, metallic tang that made his eyes water. He looked into the fire and thought of Jase’s funeral pyre, then he looked at the blood and thought of Jase’s blood on his hands and clothes. He thought of the Asphalt Rats, the gangers responsible for Jase’s death, and the flames roared in response.

Talon found the Asphalt Rats later that night, partying in a dead-end alleyway deep inside their turf in the Rox. From the amount of booze and discarded chip cases scattered around, they must have recently come into some nuyen. Talon stood watching them celebrating, drinking, and laughing after killing the best person he had ever known. A haze of red rage obscured everything he saw and felt. He hated them. More than anything, he wanted them dead. One of the gangers noticed Talon then, but he never got the chance to call out a warning.

Talon raised his arms and shouted his grief to the heavens, a cry of rage that erupted into an inferno whose flames poured into the alley like the fires of hell itself. Some of the gangers tried to run, some reached for their weapons. Most hadn’t even looked up before they were engulfed in a blast that charred their skin black and set their hair aflame. The gas tanks of the bikes exploded like a series of bombs, sending a black and orange fireball boiling into the sky and covering the sides of the nearby buildings with soot and ash.

Talon stood there at the mouth of the alley and watched it all happen. He didn’t flinch or turn away from the horror of it. His only thought was to see the ones responsible for his pain pay for what they did. The heat of the inferno was cool compared to his rage as he watched the gangers writhe, burn, and die in the flames.

It was over in a matter of seconds. The blackened and twisted remains of the bikes continued to burn, and a stream of acrid smoke billowed up from the alley. The charred corpses lay where they had fallen. Most of them never knew what hit them, or why. Tears ran down Talon’s face as he stared at the ruins.

"Forgive me," he whispered, then turned and walked away without looking back. The cut on his hand throbbed and ached, and he felt drained, empty, like he’d lost a piece of his soul. . .

Then he was lying on a cold concrete floor deep in the catacombs beneath Boston. The floor was covered with arcane diagrams drawn in paint and blood, while dark figures chanted in the shadows at the edge of the room. Above him, a dry, withered corpse dressed in tattered old clothes hung from a rusty pipe by a rope knotted around its neck. The skull-face looked down on him, its eyes burning with fire and its yellowed teeth spread in a macabre grin. A crackling voice whispered in his mind.

Hello, Father
, it said.
It’s been a very long time.

Talon bolted awake with a gasp and sat up in bed, his heart thudding in his chest. Drenched in a cold sweat, he threw off the sheets and sat up on the edge of the bed. He leaned forward slightly as he rubbed at his throbbing temples, letting some of the horror of the nightmare fade. It was so real.