The Night Dahlia Read online

  “Well, there’s a sign of improvement,” a man’s voice said. I knew it; it resided in one of the uncoupled rail cars of my mind, hidden behind pain and drugs.

  “He’s fighting.” A woman’s voice, also familiar, also lost to me in the wash of dying.

  “He’s losing,” a third woman’s voice added. It was Dragon’s voice, and I knew she was telling the truth.

  It ends in fire, sweet, acrid, sizzling fire, numbing my lips and razor-scraping my throat. I am a speck hanging before the great crimson jewel, the thudding sun full of ancient blood. It burns the petty mortal pain away with transcendent agony; it makes me whole by annihilating every tattered, ragged edge in me, filling up all my festering wounds, inside and out. The red is too old, too endless, and too merciless to leave anything alone. Tight, semi-aware darkness again. The taste of metal in my mouth. Time passes, but I’ve lost all reference to it.

  My eyes opened; I was awake. It felt wrong, uneven, to be so aware.

  I sat up in the bed. It was night, and Vigil was across the room from me, so still in his chair, in the shadows that I thought he might be asleep.

  “You set me up,” he said.

  “You know the story,” I said. “‘I’m a snake, what did you expect me to do?’”

  “It was a good scam, a good fight,” he said. “I put some of your Cambodian buddies in the hospital.”

  “I’m only chummy with one of them. You never drew your guns with them, did you?”

  “No,” he said, and I heard the pride in his voice. “Tempted, but no. Some of them may not heal up as good as they were. That bother you any?”

  “Serves them right for trusting me,” I said, searching my body for bandages, still-healing wounds. I appeared to be whole.

  “True,” Vigil said.

  “Where am I?”

  “The Hard Limit. Dragon insisted we bring you here.”

  “When did you pick up my trail?”

  “At that club. You put on a hell of a show, by the way, real low-key. The Carnifex had already made you, so I hung back and tailed him loose. So he followed your unobservant ass, and I very carefully followed his. Lost you two a few times, but I caught up.”

  “How long was I out?” I asked as I rubbed my face and discovered an unkempt beard there.

  “Two weeks,” he said. “They were pretty sure you were going to die. That death spell you did at the end, it did some serious damage inside of you, especially spiritually.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I looked at Vigil, started to say something but held my tongue.

  “Don’t get all teary,” Vigil said. “You’re the job, that’s why. You gave me the slip. If I let you get dead as well, I’ve failed my house.”

  “Understandable,” I said. “You got hit. You okay?”

  “Do us both a favor, and don’t act like you give a shit,” he said. “After a few days of you not getting better, I called in the best street doc Ankou’s money could buy. He took care of me, but you were still too far gone. Those rune bullets are a bitch if they have your number on them.”

  “Even if they don’t,” I said. “I feel weird, like I should have drains and tubes running out of me. I feel strangely okay.”

  “Dragon,” Vigil said. “When you didn’t get better after the doc, she called in some of her Nightwise contacts.”

  “Shit,” I said. “The last fucking thing in the world I need are those jag-offs getting up in my business.” Vigil paused and looked at me; he rested his steepled fingers against his slightly smiling lips, and finally he shook his head.

  “Yeah, I know how much it sucks to have all these people fighting to save your life,” he said. “Pain in the ass, man. Well, you’ll be happy to know the panaceas they tried didn’t take too well. You had too much spiritual damage for the healing magics to do you much good. As shocking as this might seem, they said inside you are pretty much a big empty.

  “Anyway, Dragon sent everyone out, and she did … something, and you screamed. Never heard a man scream like that. We heard you all the way down the hall, but you started to get better after whatever she did.”

  My mind was clear, clearer than it should be, and while I did have bullet scars, they were fully healed. I began to tumble in my mind what I thought Dragon had done to me, and it made no fucking sense at all.

  “I can tell you’re gushing with appreciation,” Vigil said. He held up the USB drive Demir had given me just before the Carnifex showed up. “I had this looked over while you were getting your beauty sleep, and none of Ankou’s people could break the encryption. Even the best Emerald Tablet Hermetic Hackers in the Life came back with nothing. Perhaps your friend Grinner could take a crack at it.”

  I sat up in the bed. “Excuse me? You and your creepy-ass boss stay the fuck away from him, or I will burn what little bit of a soul I got left dropping both of you! He’s no friend of mine. He’s business, and he’s a fucking asshole! Leave him out of this!”

  Vigil cocked his head, like he heard a noise I couldn’t hear or had suddenly seen something that confused him. He raised a palm and shook his head. “He’s here. We didn’t reach out to him. He came about a week ago on his own. He refused to look at the drive until he talked to you. He said he was under contract. He was very insistent on that point.” I tried not to laugh.

  “I kind of keep him on retainer. He’s the best … but he is an asshole.”

  “You two must get along famously. He must be something to get that initial reaction out of you,” Vigil said. “For a second there, I thought you actually gave a damn about someone other than yourself.”

  * * *

  I was sitting on the edge of the bed when Dragon came to visit. She was dressed in an old flannel shirt and bell-bottom jeans. She wore no shoes, and she smelled of wood smoke and wildflowers. She sat down in a chair and folded her long legs up into the chair, close to her knees, and sat kind of sideways.

  “You look like you’re feeling better,” she said, smiling, but I could tell it was her false smile. When she really smiled, she was like a happy kid, unaware and uncaring of how she came off. This was a practiced, polite smile. I liked it best when she smiled with her eyes, when genuine joy overcame her, surprised her. “The Maven wishes to see you. She said to come by her office when you were up and about.”

  “Swell,” I said. “Did Her Majesty happen to say what about?”

  “I’d hazard a guess that it’s the same reason she usually calls you in.”

  “Hmm, well, that’s changed with time,” I said. “First, she thought I was her best cop, then she wanted to fuck me but didn’t want any of her ‘people’ to know, and then I was her greatest disappointment, and she wanted to lecture me on how I’d fallen.”

  “I’d put my money on C,” Dragon said. “You were in town for a few days, and you stirred up the Freakz and Yeakz, pissed all over MS-13’s turf, and left her with a lot of dead bodies to sweep under the rug, including a gangland bruja and a Fae Carnifex.”

  “Tell her I’ll be by eventually, when I get around to it.”

  “Suit yourself,” Dragon said, “poke the bear.” She looked tired and a little too pale.

  “Why did you do it?” I asked. “Do you understand what it means for you? What it could do to you?”

  “Hello pot, meet kettle,” she said, the fake smile slipping a little. “In case you forgot, I do whatever I damn well please, and you, least of all people, shouldn’t say anything to me but thank you. That was some Mickey Mage bullshit you pulled with MS-13. You lied to me, kept me out of the loop until you needed me to pull your ass out of the fire. Did you even care what would happen to Dwayne and Gretchen, to you, if I couldn’t, or wouldn’t play your stupid game?” I ignored her question.

  “You gave me your blood,” I said, “a transfusion. Lauren, you only have a finite amount. You don’t keep making more like humans do, and every drop you lose takes a little bit of you away, forever.”

  “I just gave you enough to let the healing magics kick in
, enough to keep those heart-seeker rune bullets from finishing you off. It’s not like it’s the first time I’ve ever shed blood, Laytham. Your blood was mostly magic toxin, by the way, did you know that? And your soul is so hacked and hewn, there’s hardly enough left to call it that. A soul, a human soul, is infinite, enduring, or at least it’s supposed to be, with regular care and feeding. Laytham, what have you done to yourself, and why?”

  “Stupid shit, for stupid reasons. You shouldn’t have done it,” I said, standing. “You’re … unique, the last.”

  “I don’t know that, and neither do you,” she said.

  “Regardless,” I continued, “you’re like a walking museum of unnatural history. The world loses you, it loses part of its … magic. I’m … dogshit compared to you. A broken-down old man with a lifetime of horrible decisions behind him and nothing much of a future. I’ve squandered my life, my gift. If I had died in that firefight … shit, there’s already someone out there younger, more powerful, with a lot less cosmic baggage, and a damn sight more common sense.”

  “Doubtful. You forget your power echoed through this city a few weeks ago when you were agitated. You’ve done good; perhaps not as much as you’ve done ill, but that is not for me to judge. Why have I always been the only one you show this side to?” she said. “To everyone else you are the cool, swaggering, egotistical rock star. You piss magic potions and eat monsters for lunch, but not to me.”

  “You’ve seen me fall, you’ve seen me royally fuck up, but you’ve never judged me once, even when I deserved it. You still love me, even after I hurt you, after I hurt Anna. You’ve never stopped loving me, having my back. You were the only Nightwise to stand with me when all the bad shit I had been doing started to blow up. The Life will devour you if you blink. You know that. I’m too fucking scared to be this way with anyone else but you, Lauren. I’m a fucking coward at heart.”

  “The bravest people I’ve met usually were,” she said. “We’re partners. That never changes, no matter how dirty we do each other, no matter how much you’ve hurt me. I wish I could love and hate like your kind do, Laytham, but I can’t. Your emotions are all too cramped. Mine are like storms on Jupiter. You and Anna are the only people that love me, even the completely terrifying bat-fuck alien parts of me, the parts I can’t explain to you, or to her. You love me blind, and you deserve that coming back to you. You deserved a little blood.”

  “Does Anna know you did it?” I asked, looking for some clothes other than the pair of sweatpants I was in. “She couldn’t have been happy about it.”

  “She was with me when I did it,” Dragon said. “She loves you too. She just hates to see me hurt.”

  “And I did that a lot,” I said.

  “You did,” she said. “But not nearly as much as you hurt yourself. Tell me, do you think you are enacting some kind of penance upon yourself for the things you’ve done?”

  “For fuck’s sake,” I said, finally getting angry. “You’re a goddamned ancient, city destroying, mythical-ass dragon, and you’re going to try to sit there and make fucking psycho-babble excuses for me, for how I fucking use and hurt people? Maybe I’m just an immature fuck-up, Lauren. Did you ever consider that? Did you ever consider that I’m no more deep or complex than a fucking con man who swindles old folks out of their life savings or the fucking skell that kills a family for the thrill of it?

  “I was a dirty cop, I almost dragged you down with me, and I might as well have put a gun in Nico’s mouth.” Silence passed between us, hardening like ice. “I’m one of my favorite topics. I’ve made a lifetime out of getting to know me, and I can assure you that there is no noble heart hidden under that moth-eaten soul. I tried to be that, and I failed, I kept on failing. You were there, you know better than most.”

  “As long as you are alive, you can change,” this ancient, powerful being said to me softly. “It takes will and it is easily as painful as the decaying orbit of self-destruction you are on now. You have more will than any human being I’ve ever met, and your capacity for pain is seemingly endless.” She unfolded herself from the chair. “In my estimation, you were worth saving, worth a few drops of my life. I guess we’ll see which one of us is right and which is a fool.”

  “I’ll give you a hundred bucks on the fool,” I said. “Where are my cigarettes?”

  * * *

  I got a shower, passed on shaving the two-week beard, and dressed. I found a green-and-black paisley button-down shirt, a pair of well-worn jeans, and my boots, still with a few old flecks of dried blood, in the closet of the room. I figured Vigil had brought them from the mansion. I tied my hair off in a ponytail and went out to meet up with Grinner.

  I found Robert Shelton, aka Grinner, in the galley-style kitchen that was a nexus for this floor of the Hard Limit, which included Dragon’s and Anna’s suites and an arm of guest rooms, like mine. Grinner was sitting at a small table, a tea nook that Anna often haunted, sipping from a bottle of water and reading a dog-eared paperback copy of Gibson’s Mona Lisa Overdrive.

  Grinner was tall, well over six feet, and stocky; his midnight-black dye-job hair had grown out to a lazy military-cut length, no longer high or tight, but close. He was sporting matte black plugs in his ears these days, and I thought I caught a flash of new ink on his thick, muscular forearms. He was clean-shaven except for a black soul patch on his wide face. He wore baggy gray cargo shorts that fell to just below his knees. The pants had more pockets and pouches than Batman’s utility belt and most likely a very similar content. He wore ripped-up black Chuck Taylors that had a three-teardrop yin-yang symbol on the sides, as well as a black Motörhead T-shirt that he had owned since I first met him more than twenty years ago. Grinner had an earbud in one ear, connected to his smartphone on the table.

  “What the fuck are you doing here, Mr. Robot?” I asked as I opened the fridge and fished out a cold can of energy drink.

  “Waiting for your lazy ass to wake up so I can get back to work,” Grinner said, putting down the book and slipping the earbud free. “How you doing, man?”

  “I’m good,” I said. “Ready to get back on this. Oh and what’s this shit about ‘being on retainer’? Does that make you my faithful manservant?”

  “That makes you a fuck lump,” he rumbled. “Don’t push it. You contracted me for intel, and I’m doing that job. That makes you a client until we settle up, so it would have been a conflict of interest to take another job.”

  I laughed and sat down at the small table.

  “‘Conflict of interest’? When did you get a morals transplant?” I said. “Besides, I paid you up front.”

  “For what I already got for you. So now you’re paying me more. That makes you still my client. Oh, and I’m adding a little more to the tab since you questioned my business ethics.”

  “Thanks, man,” I said. “If you’d cracked that drive for Ankou, I’ve got a feeling I would have woken up back in a Dumpster.”

  “A ‘thank you’ from you, Ballard, is about as sincere as a kiss from a whore,” he said. “And don’t be so sure. Ankou may be a smeghead, but his man, Vigil, he seems pretty solid. He treated me square.”

  “I don’t trust him,” I said, “that whole samurai, honor, thing.”

  Grinner laughed.

  “Shit, man. He’s you back in the day, when you still gave a shit, still believed in something.”

  “No wonder I don’t like him.”

  “Didgeri sends her love,” he said. “She was going to meet me out here when I got the word you were laid out, but she had a last-minute consult with some cops in Texas about some red-skinned, tentacled Aussie critter called a Tara-ma-yha-who. Apparently they got one out there eating people. She’s worried about you and about Magdalena, but she felt she had to go help them stop this thing.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, they’re part of the Dreamtime and can be a bitch to dislodge from the material world. Give her my love back. I saw Magdalena. Tell her she’s … she’s okay.”

  “M
mhm,” Grinner said. “I wish she had never crossed your path, pal. You fucked her up bad.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say. I slipped the USB drive out of my jeans pocket and handed it to Grinner. “We cool to talk business in here?” Grinner examined his smartphone and made a few swipes at the screen.

  “We are now,” he said. “Dragon and Anna have some kick-ass security in this place. They like to keep their clients protected. I just did an extra sweep, and we’re good.” He examined the thumb drive, and then it disappeared into one of the pockets of his utility shorts.

  “Somewhere in that data is the identity Caern Ankou slipped into back in 2009. It’s the next path stone on the road. I need it quick. The trail is ice cold. She may have already ditched this ID and moved on.”

  “If she did, I’ll pick up the trail,” he said. “Give me a few hours.”

  “Vigil said the Emerald Tablet Hermetics struck out trying to crack the encryption,” I said. Grinner gave me a faux expression of gasping fear.

  “Oh no!” he said. “If those fucking, wand-waving script kiddies can’t hack it, then what chance could I, a mere mortal, have?”

  Grinner was in the Life, of the Life, but he was no wizard. All his voodoo was pure talent. He was a savant, seeing code the same way Mozart or Bach had seen music. He once told me that magic was nothing more than another type of coding, universal source code.

  “Give me an hour, chief,” he said.

  * * *

  I spent that hour ordering some food from a Thai place Anna, Dragon, and I used to eat at all the time. I ordered way too much food, but ended up devouring all of it. Dwayne and Gretchen came by to visit since they had heard I was back on my feet.