Going Under Read online

  “Ah crap,” Lila said. “I don’t see any of you guys suffering from guilt.”

  “Yeah, but we was born our way and you was born yours and you don’t have it in the blood. A yu-man…” he spoke as if he was talking about something unsavoury, “… a yu-man conscience is a terrible thing.”

  As is a demon one, supposing such a thing exists, Tath said icily.

  Lila was brought up short. She never thought that Thingamajig’s outbursts were ever related to himself. It was true, her conscience did nag her about the consequences of a demon lifestyle, particularly the death rates. But she had not asked any of them to fight her, and if it was her life or theirs, then she didn’t feel any guilt over what she had to do. Well, she shouldn’t… but maybe she did feel it when her inner voice reminded her that staying in Demonia was optional, not required. You did, it kept whispering just as Thingamajig had promised, you chose. Then again, what was she supposed to do? Never come here again? A slow burn of anger at her position started up in her belly as she turned and stood on the jets to face her assailant.

  “Now is not the moment,” she said to the imp. “You can keep your cupboard full of skeletons to yourself.”

  The tiny demon shrugged and dug his claws into her shoulder armour, “I see you lying, you know. And I’m not the only one. The devils have a sense for lies that can reach beyond time itself and let me tell you there are at least three of them stalking you right now, close as your own skin,” he said with a raspy primness. “But I’m your friend here. You stuck by me when She Who Shall Not Be Named wanted to fling me back into limbo—quite prematurely I must say, ‘cos you is far from in the clear. But she don’t care if you spend eternity in hell either way, that was only up to you, but you don’t get that about us that we don’t care for anyone else’s business no matter what, never mind that isn’t the point, point is I say this: did it ever occur to you that your conscience is wrong and that you’re right not to give a damn about the demons and whatever other bozos you’ve killed? ‘Cos trust me, they all were asking for it, just like this lot.”

  Her attacker was a large humanoid demon with black and blue hide, dancing carefully among the highly populated boats below. Her senses, some of them human but most of them robot, tracked it effortlessly. Scans revealed its weapons-claws, a poisoned knife, a garotting wire, some kind of boomerang, several grenades of various kinds, plus an intricate and interesting personal display of tentacles and stinging appendages. It had a mouthful of teeth like a crocodile and a huge set of wasp wings. It was armoured. But most of all, supported by a girdle and two of its powerful arms, it was holding a very large and sophisticated gun. She could not determine what kind of gun.

  As it moved it watched her and she got the impression it was smugly biding its time from its protective cover whilst she was simply standing there in the sky. She was winning on points, but points didn’t count in the end.

  “Killing is wrong,” Lila said, almost on reflex, though as she said it she considered herself to be asserting a basic humanity that was inviolable. There was an absurdity to saying it at that moment which seemed to demand a laugh, but she couldn’t muster one. She was too busy studying the gun.

  “Who says?” The imp dug his claws into her ear with familiar pain.

  She saw a variety of rounds inside the clip and the typical twinbarrel design of demon guns: one for sport and one for serious. “Everyone.” She tried to figure out which it was going to choose—although technically she could not be penalised for murder, even if the instigator of the duel only set out with maiming weapons.

  “Oh that’s convincing,” Thingamajig hoicked up a wad of phlegm and spat down into the lagoon. “Everyone. Of course. Everyone. Fneh. He’s not alone I bet. Look at him prancing around there like some fey princess.”

  “I see them.” She had picked up the two others working with the obvious demon just as the imp mentioned it, having thought of the same thing herself. One was high above her in the cloud deck, the other was on the rooftops at the water’s edge. As ordinary Lila she would have missed them, but her AI was in permanent Battle Mode here and it had no problems locating the telltale movements of those showing too much interest in her position. It had started out with twenty-one candidates, but settled on just the two after a few picoseconds of hard thinking. To Lila it was no more than her own intuition talking. Without hesitation she shot straight up as fast as her jets would carry her.

  An instant later the air shimmered where she had been and there was a loud bang.

  “Matter Vaporisator,” the imp said with relish. “Disguised as a common Letemhavit Repeater. Mmn, impressive. These guys have money behind them. That Zoomenon technology doesn’t come cheap.”

  Lila, who had heard of MVs but not seen them, was suitably silent. Humans didn’t know how MVs worked, only that they instantly reduced their target to its consituent atoms. There was a theory about information removal… but the design didn’t interest her nearly as much as the sure knowledge that whatever it hit didn’t survive.

  “They need three for the triangulation point,” Thingamajig informed her happily. “But the power source has to be with the one on the ground, the others will just have some crystals or shit. See, I went to this exhibition once in the Engineering District…”

  Lila focused on the space above her. Icy air tore at her and vapour turned to water on her face, streaming down toward her temples and chin. Her skin burned and tingled but her inhuman eyes were able to stare without pain. She raised her right arm, felt the gun system assemble itself and the shot depart without having a single thought, go through her head. There was only the wind, the vector, the target, and the intent. Cold brilliant.

  A few hundred metres above her the round detonated—shatterstar—and she darted sideways in the soft white mist as the shining fragments of coalescing and deteriorating elements burned in their characteristic sunburst yellow, white, and blue. They glimmered like witch lights and then winked out, their moment of astonishing destructive power spent. A second later two dark and indistinct lumps fled past her heading downwards. There was a trail of dark smoke and the stink of burning flesh.

  “Barbecue,” muttered the imp happily.

  As he spoke a thin, almost invisible tendril of green leapt out through her arm.

  Lila felt Tath’s grab snag on something aetheric and, to her, intangible. Like a frog’s tongue, the tendril snapped home again and lodged in her chest. Satisfaction spun there, slowly.

  I didn’t say you could eat them, she objected, but her words rang hollow because she felt the same glow of victory and there was a grin on her face, even if it was a grim one.

  It never pays to be a soul short if death comes calling, Tath said. I’ve left most of them alone but we all have debts to pay and things to consider. You are not my master.

  The imp, who was still ignorant of Tath’s presence, said, “Hey, did you see that?”

  “See what?” she said after a second’s hesitation. She didn’t know what made her angrier, her revulsion at Tath, her hypocrisy, or the imp’s perfectly timed annoying and dangerous inquisitiveness. What are you doing with it? She snapped at the elf.

  Storing it, came the reply. Later I will take one for you, just in case we need to travel to Thanatopia and back again. Shall I be so kind as to insure your pet as well? His tone left her in no doubt that he felt he had been more than generous so far in withholding his activities when she was fighting, but she couldn’t help raging.

  These are my fights, you can kill your own damned…

  Spare me, Tath retorted. We both know you need me fully capable if you are going to go haring back to Otopia on some crusade against the fey creatures. If you had any brains you would already have had me preserve the spirits of all your vanquished, so we had energy enough and to spare. I am simply performing the most basic and least cruel of the Arts. They were already dead—-we are only delaying their journey a while. Perhaps you can think of other sources of the deathbound for me to c
ollect? Maybe we can go and loiter outside a hospital for a lucky opportunity?

  They’re people, she said stubbornly.

  And what I do is wrong, he murmured. I know. I have heard it all before. But you will sing another song when I can be of use to you.

  It’s not… she was going to say it wasn’t like that.

  It is. It is just not to your liking. Or mine.

  It was. Once upon a time she had been a saving grace, carrier of a soul; a good girl. Now they were part of a team. She felt like the agreement had been foisted on her, and maybe it had, because she could have made him leave. She chose not to. And here he was, her own private death collector.

  I don’t know how you live with yourself. But she could have said it to herself.

  “Hey!” Thingamajig dragged on her ear as she took a zagging, randomised path downward, watching all the time for a chance at the demon below. “I said, Did You See…”

  “Shut up, I’m trying to think,” she said. The glow in her chest was black, laughing. You idiot, you’re supposed to stay secret.

  “…cause I was under the distink impression you had no aetheric capabilities at all. Nada. Zilch. Even the French Bird didn’t say otherwise and you know that she can tell. So if you ain’t possessed by no demons and you don’t have any powers, then…”

  “I said shut up,” Lila repeated, quietly, coldly, sidling through the cloud as beneath her the bits of dead demon began raining down on the cargo boats in steaming chunks.

  Now that their first attack had failed, the other two demons were in retreat. She was within her rights to pursue and exterminate—no duellist had a right to leave the grounds alive if their opponent lived—but they were heading in opposite directions. It was not possible to tell if they would regroup or flee. The MV would be of no use now unless she were to foolishly stand directly between the two of them. Her first impulse was simply to leave them.

  “No, no, no, you can’t be serious,” the imp jumped up and down, his claws snagging and pulling threads out of her vest shoulder. “Do you want to be hunted down like a dog by the devils from all the ages? Not to mention the demons from right now… KILL something!”

  “But…” but she pitied them.

  “Because…” the imp shook her ear violently, insisting that she finish. “You pity them because…”

  Lila stood in the cloud, her gun at her side slowly remoulding itself, as though bored, into a long, curving blade. “Because they have no chance against me.”

  “Is there some problem with this I’m not understanding?” Thingamajig sighed. “Do you have any idea how many demons want to be in your position?”

  “But that’s just it,” she said, all the while continuing to track both of her victims.

  “If you say ‘it’s not fair’ I will be forced to extreme measures,” the imp snarled. “It ain’t. But look, now you’ve had your identity crisis and you’ve given them a sporting chance. If you wait much longer you’ll disappoint the audience.”

  She had not noticed the interest coming from elsewhere—but yes, dirigibles and boats were turning in their ways and the fast-moving craft of single demons were heading in her direction, some winking with camera lenses.

  “I don’t like to kill,” she objected, electing the demon she had first seen, the one with the gun.

  “Liar.”

  She arrowed after the target on an indirect angle, watching its movements and deciding it was weaving its path only to distract. She looked ahead for any destination that was likely to be useful to it, but there was nothing in particular that stood out. In the meantime she identified it: Demon Duellist 388, Vekankal. His personal note: Die, bitch.

  Articulate, she said to herself, startled to realise how angry and hurt the two words made her. She didn’t even know the guy. Her speed increased and the paparazzi vehicles began to lose ground.

  Concise. Tath stretched out, reaching his aetheric body to just below her human skin. Where he could he always avoided the metal prosthetics, though he could run through them almost as easily as through flesh. Metal usually fouled elven aether senses, but hers did not. Another point she should have thought about more carefully when believing that human science had remade her. Her gut twisted for a moment and she tasted burning in the back of her throat.

  Behind her now the second demon had slowed down. It moved cautiously, keeping her almost directly between itself and its partner. So that answered the question about whether the MV was still functional. Lila stayed airborne as she closed in. Her body seemed strangely rigid with a feeling that at first she didn’t recognise.

  Rage, said the imp. Pure and simple. Rage at the whole unfair stupidity of the system. Rage against the machine. You might win this fight, but you’re still trapped like a fucking rat. His voice became as gritty as if he’d been smoking sixty a day his whole life long; two steps away from a cancerous rattle. She could hear him smiling as he picked her thoughts clean and she chose the right caliber of hot lead to slow her target down. Guns didn’t kill demons. Demons killed demons.

  You don’t even know why you came here and stayed here and hitched yourself to that whitemare, Teazle, except of course that being allied to him seems like a good step better than being on his hit list. Plus his attention was incredibly flattering if also a bit creepy and you’re scared of him.

  Lila pointed her right arm at the running demon in the city below her. It was in a crowd, shoving its way through, the heavy power unit of the MV slowing it down. The distance between them was about four hundred metres. Her forearm vibrated pleasantly with the thrum of perfectly engineered metal parts oiling themselves into position. Click. Blam. She took out the power unit first and hesitated… the demon dropped the useless thing and spun around, searching for her, spraying a random fire of its own missiles into the air.

  And you feel like it’s fucked your relationship with the elf. And it has. And you know it. Before it even started. And you thought you were doing such a smart thing, such an adult and responsible and carefully planned out and clever thing. It would put you in a great position of power as well as largely out of the way of serious harm, give or take the odd deathmatch of note, and Zal would be all admiring of how brave you are, sticking with all this demon junk, death obsessed pigs that we are.

  Blam, blam, blam. The pavement suddenly went green with blood and demons scattered, those closest to the victim leaping in to loot him as he fell, three wounds in his chest.

  And then there’s the elf-style junk one must always suspect is still thereall that holier-than-thou vomit loitering beneath the surface. It’s swallowing one horrible shock after another like oysters, yum yum, very sophisticated and grown-up you are. Then suddenly it tastes just like a can of crap because now some bunch of chickenshit duellists have ganged up on you, and even in a three they’re so incompetent it physically hurts to smack than down. And you hate it. Where’s the glamour?

  Lila dropped from the sky like a stone, making no effort to check her near-terminal speed. The demon was fighting its way to its feet, groping for close-range weapons, its ugly head snarling, body becoming scarlet and violet with extreme fury. Gore trickled from its chest. Lila’s boots struck it squarely on the head, the jet burns vanishing as she landed with full force and smashed its skull flat under her feet. She stood, pain rocketing through her hips and spine and into her own head like fire. Through the soles of her feet and the long metal lines of her legs she felt the demon’s soul flow like a thousand angry bees, hauled in on the fine, deadly line of Tath’s expertise. It vanished as he consumed it, slowly but surely going silent. Neither of them had a thing to say to one another.

  Heh. So that’s rage. Congratulations, babe, you won the jackpot. Say, are you sure you’re not getting some aether? I coulda sworn I smelled something.

  “I’m starting not to like you,” she said quietly to the imp as a polite riffle of applause rose out of the standing crowd. Without a second’s acknowledgement of it she took to the air in search of the th
ird conspirator.

  I’m glad you’re the cold, quiet kind, not one of those shouty ones, Thingamajig said contentedly, stabbing a hold on her ear. There’s a kind of sad dignity in the quiet ones, like they believe they still have a hold on things.

  The third demon met her on the Bulwark, a place where the mass of the city cornered itself against the eroding stone of the continent at its back. Here homes and palaces were carved into the rock rather than built from it and their roofs were the smoothed planes of irregular basalt that had hardened there millions of years before, spewed from the mouths of ancient volcanos. Many traditional duels took place here. The stones were marked with thousands of years of demon feet, hands and claws raking through the moves of their martial arts. They’d patterned the surface until it resembled instructions on a dance card.

  To remove her advantages this demon—a blueblack creature with a huge wolfish ruff, a lion’s head, and the four-armed body of a Hindu god—had chosen to establish hand to hand fighting. She knew that was its best chance. At close range her metal body could not be damaged significantly but her remaining human body was vulnerable if it could get through her guard. At base she wasn’t a fighter at all—she was a secretary with addons and attitude. At times like this that didn’t seem so comforting.

  The demon stood on its starting spot, twenty metres away. She stood on hers, behind the line cut in the rock. It put down its gun and knives, undid its belt of strange-looking devices and threw it aside. She showed her empty hands. She could no more throw down her weapons than remove her limbs, but the gesture was considered enough. She’d been here before.

  I[_ should probably turn off the AI,_] she said guiltily to Tath, her shoulders sinking as the demon readied itself and raised its arms.

  It rushed her, completely ignoring the usual steps of the first encounter. To Lila its approach took an age. Her AI mind accelerated and time slowed down. She had a year to step forward, block, and strike. It was over just like that. The demon fell dead to the stone, leaving its head in her hand. The heavy thing swung at the end of her wrist, dripping, her fingers in its eyes and her thumb in its mouth in the bowling grip she had used to wrench it from its neck.