Down to the Bone: Quantum Gravity Book Five Read online

  ‘. . . being dead isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.’

  ‘Tell me about it. First they’re happy to see you, then they’re scared shitless of you and after that pretty much everyone doesn’t know what to do with you.’

  ‘Yeah, I can tell they kind of wish I was dead again, you know? And I can’t help it that bits of their stuff goes missing. I mean, it’s not like I’m taking it, you know? But as soon as anything happens it’s like – oh, let’s search Alice, she’s probably evil.’

  ‘I know. And they’re always watching you, like they think you’re gonna freak out or something and nobody knows what to say. It’s the shits. And they’re always asking—’

  ‘Yeah, like, what’s it like, being dead, and you say you don’t know because you’re not and you don’t remember, there’s this gap and they’re so pissed because you can’t tell them anything. I mean. They totally got this priest out the other day to exorcise me. And they’re all like – no offence, Alice, it’s just that we heard a lot of stuff about you dead people not really being you and all. Can you believe that? I mean, we can’t be dead can we, because we’re like – here.’

  ‘Did it work?’

  ‘Hell, no. Nothing happened. He made them all guilty like it was their fault I was here and went off with six hundred bucks on his card. The fucker.’

  ‘Totally.’ There was a pause and then the sound of the emergency door being pushed open and leant on as the two of them went outside for a smoke. Faery weed and ’bacco.

  ‘D’you know what’s the worst?’ Alice said after they’d been quiet a minute. ‘I feel like a total disappointment. I can’t work, can’t do anything, have to carry this stupid tag around everywhere to show I’m supposed to be dead. Sometimes I wonder if I am evil. I mean, you wouldn’t know, you’d just carry it, like a disease, like a cloud. Nothing’s good since I came back whether it’s true or not. I’d kinda like to die just so I could fix things, but I’m too angry and . . . I don’t know how.’

  ‘Yeah,’ sighed the friend. ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘When we get to the interstate we can get a ride. They won’t know.’

  ‘Yeah, you think north?’

  ‘Yeah, north or wherever. You know?’

  ‘Mmn hmm.’

  Lila stood up and flushed, shook out the robes, exited the stall. The room wasn’t big enough for them not to turn and see her. Against the brilliant light of the late-afternoon sun they were just slightly transparent at the edges. They stood and stared at her, two teenagers in dated clothes with too much blusher on so that their faces looked like dolls’ faces. They recoiled slightly, but when she did nothing they turned back to their smokey huddle.

  Lila washed her hands and checked herself in the mirror as if she looked like this every day. Then she learned that her hat was nun-like, a kind of gothic wimple with drapes. The mask was warriorish around the eyes, fierce, with gold flecks for exaggerated lashes. For all she said about it being ridiculous it looked imposing. If you were going to invigilate the end of the world, it’s what you’d probably hope to wear.

  She dried her hands in the airblaster and watched her sleeves billow. Then, unable to prevent herself, she turned around and saw the dead girls again. There was an intensity, a focus to them that was unnerving. They held the cheap smoke as if it was precious oxygen and watched her, bold and strangely submissive at the same time, waiting for her to make her move. Since she’d already earwigged their conversation and intruded more than anyone had a right to she felt bad, and because of Max she felt double bad, and the nun outfit, which was another lie felt worse yet, but as the seconds passed she found nothing to say other than a choked, ‘Bless you.’

  And with that pathetic line she made her getaway.

  Zal had ordered for both of them when she reached the table and for once she didn’t care. She slid into the booth next to him, so shocked by the banality and horror of the conversation she’d just witnessed that she didn’t know what to say.

  For the first time she really considered the question – why were they here at all? They hadn’t appeared until Xaviendra’s intervention. Xaviendra had made and resurrected the dead as a temporary army in Otopia. Certainly she was involved. But Lila’s written message to Max was equally powerful, she thought. All her thoughts about causes led her consistently to one place: Under. But she dared not speak openly about Under, or even covertly, not anywhere where there might be people capable of overhearing.

  ‘It isn’t your fault, Lila,’ Zal said as the waitress arrived with water and a jug of Faery Lite. She placed frozen mugs in front of them, a plate of beernuts, a plate of some elf things Lila didn’t know the name of but which looked not unlike a fruit salad and a bowl of potato chips. She didn’t give Lila a second glance.

  Lila looked at each of the dishes, reached out and filled her mug with clear golden ale from the pitcher, gave the pitcher to Zal and said, ‘Why does it feel like it is, then?’

  He paused and took a long drink. ‘You know what’s interesting? I don’t need to name anything specific and you just assume it’s your fault. I don’t even need to question that there will be something that fits the concept of ‘your fault’, whether it’s the crap that passes for motorbikes these days or the change in the weather or the existence of some weird-ass wormhole where my old house used to be. Or all of those.’

  ‘Still feels like it is though,’ she said quietly and defiantly.

  Zal shrugged. ‘There are a billion people out there, of one kind and another, and about a million of them reckon themselves players in whatever’s going down. Most of them are wrong. Everyone is a player, but few players ever have the trick hand, and when they do have it, most likely they don’t know and never will know they had it.’

  He paused and she noted that he wasn’t able to name Xaviendra, or was unwilling. ‘I got all this from Mal by the way. And what happened to you makes it seem like you’re the middle of things, and you are. You’re the middle of your things, your life, your stuff. But you’re not The Middle. There are about a million other fuckers out there fucking up everything regardless of what you do. So relax.’ He was frowning as he pushed the plates away, pulling the beer and the pitcher towards himself with slow reluctance.

  ‘Are you okay?’ She pushed the dishes to the other side of the table, trying to look into his face to calm a sudden feeling of alarm. His hair hanging down made it hard.

  ‘Can’t eat,’ he muttered, anger a bad note in his voice. ‘I feel like I want to but . . .’ he tried again, picked up the fork, brought it close, sniffed the fruit, opened his mouth. He threw it down suddenly with a clatter that turned the faces of the closest diners towards them for a brief moment.

  Lila realised she hadn’t seen him eat anything since their reunion. Drink yes. And she’d assumed he’d been feeding himself – their schedules hadn’t exactly crossed much. ‘Can’t eat because you’re ill or—’

  ‘No,’ he bit out, filling his glass to the brim and watching a few faery suds roll over and down the side of the mug, their iridescent bubbles showing tiny images of clouds that blew into the shape of dragons and then away. ‘Fucking dragons,’ he muttered. ‘But it’s not their fault. Jack’s doing. Curse him to the seven hells.’ He picked up the mug and took a long draught, but she could see it was a struggle to swallow it, as though it were mud and not beer, solid and not liquid, ten times heavier than its weight. When he was done he was snarling and his hand on the mug handle was a fist.

  She put her hand out to his, to touch his skin and make deeper contact. His fingers felt as they always had – bony and strong, but now that she realised it, too light. Zal was solid enough. He had flesh, he was as real as the waitress or the table or the food, but there was an insubstantial quality to him that couldn’t be measured in kilograms or density. It was like he was made of something different altogether, something that was pretending to be a solid body very successfully, but wasn’t good on the details. As there was no obvious data to confirm
this notion with what she could consider factual evidence, it had gone straight under the mental rug where she swept everything she couldn’t confirm. There was a lot under that rug.

  She folded his hand into hers and felt him squeeze her gently, even though he kept staring straight ahead at the fascinating pink naugahyde of the seat on the other side of the booth.

  She tried prompting, ‘When we left the void ships you had to go back with Tath, through Under. This is why?’

  His face was grim, a rare expression for him, and his voice was barely controlled, though quiet. ‘When the second sister lifted me from Under, she didn’t take my body with her. It’s gone now, buried in Winter. Then the sisters made me a body out of cloth, but when Glinda took me to the Fleet I lost that too. If I went to Demonia with you and Teazle directly I’d have been a ghost or a shadow. Any bloody necromancer could have eaten me for lunch. But Glinda told me there was a way for me to get a new body that would survive here. A dragon told me the same thing. I sat at Ilya’s fireside and the longer I stayed in his firelight, the more solid I became. The element filled me up. But it’s not the same as the old one. It wears away.’

  ‘It’s too light,’ she said.

  ‘Yes. It’s made of light. I’m not what I used to be. I’m more like an illusion or a faery glamour. Good enough to drink certain things, if they’re magical enough. Good enough to fight and fuck. But not good enough to eat it seems. I can’t even put it in my mouth. It’s like I’m blocked.’

  Lila felt the distance between them increase. ‘Who’s Glinda?’

  At that moment the waitress reappeared with the rest of their order and Lila had to lean back as the table was filled with steak, ribs, potato salad and bread. Dishes of hot pie and ice cream filled the gaps. The smell rising from it all was thick and sweet.

  Nostrils wide, inhaling deeply, Zal said, ‘Glinda is my death. Atropos, the last Valkyr, necessity, destiny, What Must And Shall Be – whatever you like to call her. Sister Number Three. Doesn’t matter. I’m still hungry.’ He drained the mug on the second draught and gave a short, unhappy sigh.

  Now that food was present and glorious Lila found that she was starving. It seemed wrong to eat when he couldn’t. She stared at the food. ‘Destiny. And you’re not moved by her personal interference in your life? That doesn’t make you important?’

  Zal picked up a rib and licked it forlornly. ‘It makes me important to her for reasons best known to herself. That’s all. I didn’t ask her about it. Seemed – what’s that word you humans like to use – inappropriate. You had a dragon hanging around your bra for weeks. Did you ask it questions? No. Quite rightly. Because you know damn well that whatever you want to believe about yourself it wasn’t your instrument, you were just some legs and arms it wanted to use for a while. Now eat for fucksakes.’

  ‘Playthings of the gods?’ Lila said. She picked up a rib dripping in barbecue sauce and a cold, unkind pleasure rolled over her as she imagined what that was going to do to the faery dress.

  ‘Not gods. Just bigger and badder than you in the scheme of things.’ Zal dropped the rib onto his plate and picked up the steak in both hands, running his tongue over the dripping, peppered edge. He licked his lips then tossed the whole thing onto her plate and wiped his hands meticulously on her immaculate sleeve. ‘Fuck ’em all to hell.’

  After that most of her hunger deserted her. She picked at everything and then asked for it to be bagged up. ‘We can take it back for Sassy. If she’s still there.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Zal said, although now his voice was quite different. Wondering anger marked it so strongly it made her look up with a jolt. ‘If we make it out of here alive.’

  Lila followed his gaze. He was looking across the diner and out of the misted, greasy windows into the parking lot where a cluster of semis screened off most of the highway. She didn’t see the trouble until a few seconds later, which was still earlier than most.

  A large group of cars and trucks had pulled up on the outer edge of the lot and now the passengers were getting out. They shared a slow, deliberate style of action, which confirmed in Lila’s mind and heart that they were bad news. They were wearing shirts and armbands with the same logo, a skull and crossbones in red. She counted thirty, until a group of bikers rode up bearing the same sign on their jackets – hastily applied in most cases, over older colours. Her data lookup was working perfectly. She heard Bentley replying in her mind’s ear before she was even aware of asking the question,

  ‘That’s Deadkill. They’re one of the vigilante groups I told you about. They kill Returners and anyone who tries to stop them. Very organised. They will wait until they find undead before they start shooting, but after that I’d say all bets are off.’

  Lila replied silently, digitally. ‘There are demons with them, I see two. And maybe a kind of fae.’ Guns had begun to appear, methodically pulled from vehicles and handed out. Ammunition was loaded, checked. It hadn’t occurred to her before that the Returners were as killable as any other human being, but it must be so. She didn’t see any special weapons.

  ‘Yes. The demons are part of a set that hunt around looking for violent crime most likely. There are a few in the City area. And Deadkill have Hunter Children as members according to the last seized records but they organise by blip at the last minute and keep their plans off the networks. This must have been cued in the last twenty minutes – yeah, uh huh, I see the phone nets passed out a list bleep forty-two minutes ago so that will be the signal, not that you can tell what it is until it breaks. Just unlucky you’re there. Or lucky. Depending.’

  Lila took a bigger scan of the area and the net. ‘I don’t see any cops.’

  Bentley hummed. ‘Ah, the emergency call record . . . they’ve been scammed. All the ones in your area have been pulled on fake calls, at least, I bet they’re fakes. Just far enough to be away.’

  ‘Can you get backup?’

  ‘Not sooner than fifteen minutes. On their way but . . .’

  Now the other people in the diner had noticed what was going on outside. Disbelief and uncertainty meant they were still seated for the most part and except from a few raised voices there was still nothing amiss inside.

  Lila turned to Zal. ‘Demons, one fae, lots of guns. Fifty. At least. Maybe more on the way.’ She turned back, alert, systems running, lifting, speeding. Her blood seemed to freeze though it was accelerating. ‘Gasoline cans. Flame throwers. Shock prods.’ And there were other things in the arsenals that didn’t fit with the story of simple killing either; ropes and shackles, and chains.

  The waitress came to their table, her attention on the windows. She dumped a large brown paper sack full of food containers in front of them and said, mostly to herself, ‘Now what the heck is that? Some kinda convention?’

  Lila stood up and pushed out beside her – no easy feat in the mass of the robes. The woman looked at Lila’s hands on her arms and opened her pink-lipsticked mouth to object.

  ‘Exit,’ Lila said, firmly but quietly. ‘Is there a back way out?’ She had no faith that the lynch mob wouldn’t have thought of this first but she had to know.

  ‘Through the kitchen but—’

  ‘Do you have a cold store?’

  ‘Yeah but—’

  ‘You need to get everyone and move inside it, lock yourselves in. Right now.’ Cold stores had at least some reinforcements in their structures, mostly, she thought. Better than being in the open anyway. Anything would be better than that.

  She ran her eyes over the customers. They were moving now, standing, grabbing their stuff, dropping their cutlery . . . There were kids, teenagers, all kinds of people. She couldn’t tell just by looking at them if any of them were Returners but there were certainly fae there in their ‘slob’ glamour forms, disguised as ordinary people, so un-special your eye would slide over them twice without noticing. And Zal. And her.

  The outside mob showed no signs of hurrying their marshalling. They were forming up facing the door and windows, w
eapons hefted openly. They didn’t shout too much. Another bad sign, she thought, pushing at the waitress’s slack response. ‘Move! For your life! Get into the store room!’ People heard her now, reacted to the voice of authority she’d pulled from her repertoire, but they were still slow and then the sluggish, dumb air and its steady flub of old country music was pierced by a howling scream from the dim corner where the sign for the ladies’ blinked in broken neon.

  Then everyone ran as Lila stood still, knowing what it meant, momentarily paralysed by the horror she felt, the surge of dry, deathly fear. The girls on the fire-exit steps had taken too long over their last smoke. They were caught.

  She felt Zal push past her as he jumped over the table, from there over the heads of the panicking customers, onto another counter, onto the bar, over to the windows. Shadow flooded out from him, a cloud of unnatural, impenetrable darkness. His speed and the recognition that he could buy them a few seconds by hiding them and confusing the enemy galvanised her.

  A staccato burst of fire from a machine gun broke through the screams that filled the room now, driving the panic. She registered its meaning – it came from the back – as if it were old news. The dead girls were dead again.

  Now she had to struggle to fight through the bodies rushing past her. She heard glass break at the front and registered the presence of petrol in the air. Too heavy to properly ignite it coated a table in weak yellow flame. Fury and loathing filled her. She reached the door, crossing the zone of black that Zal had trailed. Beside her she felt his presence, stronger, brighter, and realised he ate the light – he ate the light – it was so important in its impossibility, but it wasn’t important now, there was no time for it. Instead her hand was opening the door and her foot was kicking it aside on its pathetic hinges that gave just like the calculations told her they would so the whole thing burst free and went flying, low and whirling, a missile, into the front lines of the band standing below the steps. They scattered like bowling pins.