Division Zero: Lex De Mortuis (16 page)

The sound of munching wandered away into the distance. Julio seemed to remember that hanging a mirror only takes about thirty seconds when the hooks are already installed. He excused himself and went for the door as if the room had fleas. She smirked, and then used the mirror to make sure she still looked her age.

The outer door squeaked closed. Beep, locked.

For a moment, she fumed at the idea Julio could think Evan was her son and not her kid brother; she would have been thirteen when he was born. When her brain settled on the idea, really wrapped around his assumption Evan was hers, she smiled.

“Hell with you, Julio; your loss.” She flicked off the bathroom light.

“That popcorn still hot?”

onsciousness snuck up and pounced on her. Kirsten sighed, stretched, and rolled her head to the right. The holo-bar on the nightstand projected the clock when it sensed her looking at it―5:50 a.m. Fatigue was gone, but an indefinable feeling of unease settled in. Feet swished back and forth beneath the sheets while fingers picked at the material of her shirt. She wanted to enjoy the feeling of a proper, functioning comforgel pad that did not force her to sleep in skivvies to avoid a sweat bath, but all she could do was worry.

She rolled to the side and noticed Evan’s empty sleeping bag. She shot upright, about to panic, but exhaled at the sound of a running autoshower. The light leaking out from under the bathroom door flickered, as though someone stepped past it.

Alarmed again, she slipped out of bed and grabbed her service weapon. Evan quoted the great Monwyn, his voice echoing in the tube as he chanted the Invocation of Arcane Dominion. She would have smiled if not for her fear of an intruder in the apartment. She crept to the door, brushing it aside with her left hand, aiming the laser with the other. Bright light within caused an involuntary squint.

Amid the foggy cylinder, patches of Evan blurred through the vapor as he gesticulated and made lightning sound effects. The silver spray ring reached the floor, paused, and started back up. Two feet shy of the autoshower, Theodore, in mid-sneak, was about to stick a head full of scraggly black hair through the plastic. A rain of phantom droplets fell from his soaked and ragged trench coat, held out like the wings of a buzzard. Boots squished as he stepped, but the moisture existed only for him.

“Theodore,” Kirsten muttered, careful to remain quieter than the whirring machinery. “So help me, if you do anything to him…”

He froze, whipping around with a surprised look that relaxed into an innocent grin. When she did not smile, he straightened up. The dark stains on his olive drab pants glistened crimson in the light, still oozing from ancient bullet wounds. He trudged out of the bathroom through her. After nudging the door closed, she crossed her arms.

“Theodore, what the hell were you going to do to him?”

He bowed. “Sorry, heard the thing running and the room wasn’t blocked off. I couldn’t resist the thought you’d forgotten again. I was hoping to catch another peek of your luscious titties. Course, kids are fun to scare the bejesus out of.”

“Please leave him alone; if you ever do anything nice for me, make it that.” She stomped across the room and fell on the bed, tossing the E-90 on the nightstand. “Dammit, Theodore, I thought someone was in the apartment.”

With an exaggerated hurt pout, he glided over, making a show of floating. “I’m not a person anymore?”

“You know what I mean, a criminal.”

“Thank you for the compliment.” He bowed, deeper this time. “That’s a nice new mirror. It would almost be worth it to stick my head up through the bowl again.”

Kirsten blushed. Her elbow ached, remembering when she smashed the old one. “Why do you torment me like that?”

“It’s not just you. You’re just the only one what sees me.”

Her face scrunched with disgust.

“Hey, I’m dead. I’m―”

Kirsten frowned. “Not dead. You’ve said that every time you’ve come here.”

“Trademarked.” He snapped nonexistent suspenders. “Anyway… I figured you’d like to know, some of the boys saw some shit. Word among The Kind is something slipped out of the infernal darkness.”

Consciousness arriving an hour early required a hand on the face, and an eye rub. “Give me that once more in English, please?”

He chuckled, pacing back and forth, trailing an effect of wet carpet that faded within seconds of his passage. “Group of my friends, we have a sort of community. Call ourselves
The Kind
. Spirits without any qualms, without any attachments, we’re just in it for the fun.” He spun to face the sudden light from the door. “No hurry to go… through.”

Evan emerged from the bathroom, flicking the light off. He walked by, tugging at his briefs, and waved at Kirsten without looking. “Morning.” He paused by his sleeping bag. “Hi, Theodore.”

Plop.

The ghost grumbled. “Dammit, boy, have the decency to at least act scared.”

Face-first in his pillow, he shrugged. “You probably can’t do anything to me. An’ if you are powerful enough to hurt me, she’ll splat you.”

Theodore gestured at him, a wounded look sent at Kirsten. “Do you believe this? I’ve caused corporate assassins to cry; this little bugger ignores me like I’m a bit of carpet lint.”

“Soggy carpet lint,” Evan muttered, already half-asleep.

Kirsten giggled. “So what about this darkness?”

Orbiting the bed, Theodore sent a series of faces at the sleeping boy.

“Please, Theodore. It might be important.”

He came to a halt, dripped a few times, flapped his arms, and sighed. “Okay, fine. You know where the Harbingers drag the bad ones off to? Well, sometimes the door don’t close all the way and a couple of ̓em get out.” He leaned close enough for her to see flaking lines in his white face paint.

“Damn.”

“Aye. Damn.” A nod flung water at her before he stood up straight. “You’re a right bit of a wordsmith, girl.
Damn’s
a fine good way to put it. Never did understand that, how they get
stronger
after they get taken. Them abyssals, they not ghosts anymore, they be somethin’ else.”

“Demons?” She frowned at the blood perpetually oozing from the gunshots that killed him.

“Some people call ̓em that. That other place, it turns ̓em into a whole other thing than just a ghost. Course, they ain’t supposed to be
able
to get out. If’n you get run over and killed by a car, does it matter if it was a sedan or a coupe?”

Kirsten blinked. “A what or a what?”

Theodore waved at her. “Bah, damn kids.”

“Aren’t escapees the sort of thing Harbingers are supposed to deal with?”

Theodore laughed. “Those things? Nah. They go after ghosts, but the escaped ones, the abyssals, they’re too strong. They have too much will to remain. There’s rules, ya know.”

“So they just run around forever?”

“Well, I’m sure your little party trick will work. But the
other
ones, they will get involved once them abyssals get too powerful. Somethin’ ̓bout wreckin’ the balance. Course, no tellin’ how many people’d be dead by then.”

“I’m not going to sit back and let them run amok; just tell me already, skip the guilt trip.” Kirsten curled up on the bed, under the sheet. “Can you make it quick? I still have another fifty minutes to sleep.”

“What I hear, and this was from an old soul, is that if they get too big they throw things out of whack and something
else
comes down to kill them. Kind of like a Harbinger, but it plays for the other team.” He chuckled.

“An angel?”

He produced a spluttering noise with his tongue, shrugging. “Guess that’s as good a name as any. Day and night, light and dark. Existence by contrast. No one would know what light was if there was no dark to hold it up against. But, keep your eyes open, Kirsten. Word from The Kind is spirits got out of the
bad place
. Might even be someone you sent there.”

“Dammit, Theodore, now I can’t sleep.”

“Heh. Gotcha.” He winked. “If they didn’t come already, they ain’t looking for you. Feel bad for whoever it is they want, though. Things what crawl up from the Abyss are not happy things.”

“Guess I’ll just have to cast daybolt at ̓em.”

Theodore lifted an eyebrow. “What?”

Evan grinned.

heery electronic music nagged Kirsten out of a momentary nap. Her eyes cracked open, hurting from pale grey light saturating the city in front of her. A shifting mass of warped faces, hands, and dark clothing flowed through the rain on the windshield. Bright orange light sent her into a cringe away from the driver side window. On the other side, a large compound shadowed a courtyard. Round and white, the buildings resembled a scaled-up arrangement of hatboxes, dotted with windows and architectural ridges.