elcome to the first page of the rest of my novel. I’m in the process of crowbarring this thing out of my head, and, as an incentive to myself to just quit fucking with it and write it, we’ll be playing the post as I go game. So, new chapter every Friday.
     Category-wise, I guess this falls into that new “urban fantasy” stuff that people like Charlaine Harris, Jim Butcher, Laurell K. Hamilton, and others, are doing. I’m heavily influenced by a lot of the old school horror authors, though, as well as a long stint of White Wolf gaming, so I really don’t expect to be as upbeat and positive as Harris and Butcher, and frankly, I just don’t have the stamina to write as much sex as Hamilton does. Sorry. I do like me some violence, though, so I expect there will be plenty of that.
     PS: This is going up basically in rough-draft format. So, yes, there will be mistakes and shaky bits that need fixing. Feel free to point these out. Feel free to comment and critique. Encouragement will not be looked down upon, either.

     As corpses go, this one wasn’t too bad. I’ve found worse. I once stumbled across the den of a rabid werewolf, and the things I found in there qualified as nightmare fodder. If I was given to nightmares.
     By comparison, this is pretty junior league. It was an older man, middle fifties or so, full head of iron gray hair, seamed, jowly face, hazel eyes staring up into the darkness of the abandoned building. He was wearing a pinstripe business shirt and dark slacks, and a really nice pair of leather shoes. He had a gold wedding band and a pricey-looking pinky ring with a chunky red ruby. Also, a gold watch. He hadn’t been dead too long, either. He was in good shape, for a corpse, had barely started to smell.
     Of course, he was laying in the center of a pentagram. The pentagram was drawn wrong, and meant to be upside down, to boot. There were a couple of stubby black candles left over at the points. It was your standard wanna-be Satanist set up. This kind of thing always aggravates me. Amateurs have no business farting around in the arcane — it invariably leads to trouble. I wish they’d do an ad campaign on it or something. The War on Stupid Mages? Don’t Be Dumb and Conjure?
     Not snappy enough. Probably won’t ever happen.
     
     There was the additional difficulty of recognizing the victim. It was hard not to – as deputy mayor, he was in the news a lot. I couldn’t wait until this hit the papers. “Devon Brant Dead of Devil Worship” or something to that effect. It would completely eclipse the fact that the mayor had just beat up two cops in a drunken rage.
     I love Detroit.
     I wondered how the guy had died. There wasn’t a mark on him. There was no blood, no bruising, no cuts or gunshots or wounds of any sort. He looked peaceful enough, like he’d just keeled over dead in the center of the pentagram. Maybe he’d been in the midst of summoning some lesser scumbag, and had a heart attack?
     I was standing in an abandoned 7-11. The windows were boarded over, and the store was emptied of racks or counters. The coolers were still there, but the glass doors were gone. It was going on two in the morning, and I was not in a nice part of town, either, so the traffic and city noise roaring outside the building was punctuated by an occasional burst of gunfire. It was Friday night, and the Pistons had just lost another game, so folks had their blood up.
     There was no power in the building, so the only light came from the little orb floating over my shoulder, a witchlight. I stood in its clean white glow, staring down at the dead body of a well-known politician, in a pentagram, and heard someone forcing the same back door I’d forced to get in. The scraping noise echoed from the back of the 7-11.
     “’Bout goddamn time.” I called, rubbing my face as I studied the mess before me. I heard foot steps and glanced over as a man filled the doorway between the storage and the store. I looked him up and down, raising my eyebrows. “You’re not who you’re supposed to be.”
     “I hear that a lot.” He leaned in the frame, a dry smile on his face, his words flavored with the faded remains of an Irish accent. He was a big guy, built like a linebacker, a few inches taller than me, which put him over six feet. He was a few years older than me, as well, curling brown hair showing some white threads, cold blue eyes braced by the beginnings of crow’s feet. I’d put him around forty, and it had been a hard forty. He was a rough man, not ugly, but he had a look to him like he’d dragged himself off the floor of the local bar and gone searching for trouble.
     “Irish.” I said, by way of greeting. It was the only name I had for him. I’m sure he had a real name, but he’d never volunteered, and I hadn’t gone to the bother of figuring it out, yet.
     “Alice.” He returned, looking me over. “Bit dressed up for this, aren’t yeh?”
     I glanced down at myself. Instead of the usual t-shirt, jeans, and tanker boots, I was wearing a black dress and heels, which were killing my feet. It was an ankle-length dress, because when you’re as tall and rail-skinny as I am, there’s only two suitable lengths for a skirt, and that’s “floor” and “wide belt”. It was too cold for “wide belt”. My long red hair was up, I’d gone to the bother of make-up and jewelry, and I was huddling into a thin leather jacket that was doing piss-all to keep me warm.
     “I started the evening on a date.” I sighed. It had been a decent date, too, none of this boring dinner-and-a-movie stuff. The gentleman du jour had taken me to an art showing. I’d gotten a call from the friend I’d been expecting instead of Irish, here, and had to ditch my date.
     Such is life. Art shows are a bit too stuffy for me, anyways.
     “Hell’ve a way to end it.”
     “You’re telling me.” I gave a derisive snort, shaking my head.
     “So what’ve we got here?” He asked, waving at the body with all its stage dressing.
     “A clusterfuck in the making. You recognize him?” I gestured at the corpse as I pulled my cell phone out of my jacket pocket.
     “Should I?” He walked over. There was just the slightest weave to his stance, but he was in good shape for this late. He stood, looking at the body, his hands in the pockets of his leather great coat, possibly to hide the shaking. If he was so sober at this time of night, odds were he was trying to dry out some again.
     “He’s been on the news a lot lately. Devon Brant, deputy mayor.”
     “Shite.”
     “Yep.” I flipped my cellphone open, found four text messages waiting for me, from the man I’d been expecting. First, Running late, followed by Tied up can’t make it, then Did u find it, and finally, Put ur damn phone on vibrate! I grinned, turned the ringer on, and snapped the phone shut. “What brings you here?”
     “Saw yer car a few blocks back. Figured there had to be trouble around close.”
     “Flatterer.” I traded the cell phone for my cigarettes. It was crap, of course. There was no such thing as the Irishman just turning up somewhere out of idle curiosity. If he was here, it was for a reason. Whether he eventually chose to share that reason with the likes of me was pretty much up to the vagaries of fate. I think it’s his way of salving his conscience for talking to me in the first place.
     Technically, he and I were enemies. He was a member of the Holy Roman Order of St. Michael, a Catholic order almost as old as the church itself. Originally, they’d been demon hunters, but they’d expanded their repertoire over the centuries to include just about everything supernatural, including sorceresses like me. I didn’t know a lot about the Order, other than they were bad news for the occult, and should be avoided. In theory, they were a den of intolerant religious fanatics who’d as soon shoot you as look at you, and sure, there were plenty of Ordermen who fit that description. In practice, it was an ugly old world out there, and the occasional Orderman would take help where he could find it, as long as he didn’t get caught at it by the upper echelons. I understand it’s a death penalty for consorting with the enemy.
     “What’s all this then?” He asked, studying the set-up.
     “Bunch of crap, is what it is.” I stuck a cigarette between my lips and lit up. “I’ve never seen such a mess.”
     “What is it? Was he tryin to summon demons or something?”
     “Really? Is that all the better they teach you guys?” I drew the cigarette from my lips and flicked ash while he cut me an irritated glare. “Seriously. This is Hollywood shit. Look, you’ve got your pentagram, right? Nobody uses that. You might start with a star, but it would have at least six points, and you have to fill it in with all kinds of sigils, runes, equations, et cetera. It’s drawn out in salt, how dumb is that? One wrong move, you screw your line up, and there goes all your wards, and also, salt is a purifying element more than protective.” I crouched down, licking my fingers and dabbing up some of the salt. I tasted it and made a face. “And, it’s table salt, for fuck sake. Table salt. And the guy is sitting in the middle, what’s the point of that? Something like this, sure, you’re trying to summon a critter and contain it, so why would there be a guy in there?”
     He arced an eyebrow at me, skeptical. “Well, it’s upside down, for demons. Wouldn’t he be a sacrifice, like?”
     I braced my elbows on my knees, staring up at him. “No blood, man. The vast majority of demons want a blood sacrifice, and devils don’t want sacrifices at all. They want souls, and they want them live and kicking, out doing rotten things to other people.” I shrugged, hitting my cigarette. I glanced at the pentagram. “And it’s a star in a circle. You know what an upside down pentagram means? It means you’re facing the wrong way.”
     “I wouldn’t take it so light if I was you.” He said it mildly enough. “I’ve seen ‘em summoned in this way, before.”
     “Sure. You can manage about anything if you try hard enough. I’m pretty sure this was never an actual, powered circle, though. I’d be able to see it if it was, and it doesn’t look like it.” There were no echoes of power here. Everything looked just as mundane as could be.
     “So what’s the point’ve it?” He rolled his eyes, waving one hand out, showing his irritation.
     “Good question. I’d like to know how the guy died, myself. That might give us a clue.” Irish moved around the edge of the circle, for a better look at the deputy mayor. “It’s safe to walk in, if you want.” I said, and my phone went off in my pocket, a soft beep. I pulled it out and looked, then sighed, flipping the phone open. “Hey.”
     “Hey, don’t you ever answer your phone?” The voice on the other end was warm and rich, a voice full of velvet and dark chocolate. Tyrell wasn’t my favorite person in the world, but I could listen to him talk all day.
     “Nah, not really.” I said, stepping away from the circle.
     “Did you find it?”
     “Yeah. Got a problem, here, though.” I glanced over my shoulder. Irish had stepped into the circle, crouched down next to the body.
     “What’s that?”
     “There’s a body, here. Deputy mayor.”
     “What? Shit! Are you sure?”
     “Oh yeah, I’m positive.”
     “Are you sure he’s dead? Did you find the glyph?”
     “Yes, and what glyph?” I asked, turning back around to look at the circle. “There’s nothing here but the body and a salt pentagram. Couple of stubby candles, nothing special.”
     “Didn’t you get my message?”
     “You had a crap connection. All I heard was something about circles, and the 7-11 on Walsh. You didn’t tell me there’d be bodies.”
     “That’s because there hasn’t been. I sent you because there were unspeakable glyphs in the last two circles I found.”
     I went still and wide-eyed, staring into the circle. Irish was down on one knee, had turned the body over. The former deputy mayor was staring sightlessly up into the ceiling. I brightened my witch light and did a slow turn. “There’s nothing here, Ty. Just me and a body.”
     Irish had turned on his knee to watch me.
     “Did you check the body?”
     “Not yet.”
     “You better. Listen, I’m clear across town. I think Brianne is on that side somewhere, though. You want me to send her?”
     “No, I got it. What do you want done with the body?”
     There was a long pause. I could hear cars and sirens on Tyrell’s end, and wondered what he’d gotten into. Tyrell was what we called a Praetorian, a kind of city guard for Detroit’s mage community. The Praetorians worked for our council, the Arcana.
     “Burn it.” Tyrell said.
     “That’s official orders, right? I don’t mind consulting, but I’m not doing your dirty work for you, Ty.” Not for free, anyway. It would be easy enough to pin a bad call on me, and keep himself in the clear, if it turned out that destroying the deputy mayor of Detroit’s corpse wasn’t the best idea. There wouldn’t be a lot I could do about it, either. I was not a Praetorian.
     “Yeah, call it official. I’ll call Mietter and let him know what’s going on.” Mietter was Brian Mietter, a mage who sat on the Arcana.
     “Fine. I’ll be calling to double check that.”
     “You’re so suspicious, Alice. Call me back and tell me what you find.”
     He hung up on me. I clicked my phone shut and stuffed it back in my pocket, flicking ashes and frowning. “You might want to get away from that.” Irish stood, took a step back. I like a man who listens.
     “What’s wrong?”
     “Not sure.” I bit my cigarette filter and approached the body, nudging it with my toe. It laid there, like dead bodies usually do. I knelt where Irish had been a moment ago and frisked the body, found nothing, not even ID.
     Huh. He was dressed as though he’d come from the office, but he didn’t have a wallet. Yet, all his jewelry, hell, even the nice leather shoes, was still there. I glanced around again. I didn’t see any signs of anyone else having been in here, no foot prints. The floor was in decent shape, fairly clean, considering. Irish and I hadn’t left any prints, either.
     I undid the corpse’s shirt, pulling it apart, found an undershirt, and lifted that up.
     “What’re yeh lookin for?”
     “That.” I answered, baring the deputy mayor’s chest. We both flinched and looked away before the symbol had time to settle into our eyes.
     “What the hell –”
     I stood, stepping back by Irish. “Fucking things.”
     “What is it?”
     “An unspeakable glyph.” I drew the cigarette from my mouth, exhaled.
     He stood there for a moment, watching me, then glanced at the body again. He blinked and looked away, pinching the bridge of his nose, as though seeing it had given him a headache.
     “Did you see what shape it was?”
     “Like a triangle.”
     That didn’t do me any good. A lot of them are like triangles. I was going to have to look at the damn thing. I ashed on the floor, gritting my teeth and bracing myself. It might give him a headache to look at the thing, but Irish was just a man, a mundane. I was a mage, and I would see a lot more of the glyph than he could. I squared up and looked at it.
     It was a triangle-shaped scar on the deputy mayor’s skinny, hairy chest, keloid and shiny purple, with several dots and squiggles spaced around and inside the shape. The points of the triangle met somewhere beyond infinity, and its lines twisted through more dimensions than the traditional three. The math for this triangle had been worked out in some plane that had never heard of human geometry, and the dots were dime-sized black holes, several of which blinked at me as I studied the glyph. The squiggles writhed, like a nest of worms.
     I blinked, and my vision was tinged red. I stepped back and looked away.
     “Unspeakable glyph. And they’re called that because –?”
     “Because if you say ‘em out loud, your brains will leak out of your ears.” I blinked my eyes clear, rubbing them. My fingers came away bloody. Charming.
     “Grand.”
     I turned to look at him. He was standing with his arms crossed, glaring at the body and the glyph as though he found them both personally offensive, a deliberate and malicious insult. I was familiar with the expression, because it had been directed my way more than once. It was probably about to be directed my way again, because I had to find out what had been done to the corpse to result in the glyph.
     I waved at the witchlight, gesturing it back behind me, tossing my shadow out over the body. I flicked my cigarette butt into the darkness, and my shadow shifted and did a push-up, lifting itself off the floor.
     Irish shot me a sharp glance.
     The shadow ran her spidery hands over the symbol, up the chest and throat, and then pried the corpse’s mouth open, sliding her arm in up to the shoulder.
     “What the hell is that?”
     I arced an eyebrow at him. “My shadow. What, yours doesn’t do tricks?” The shadow rooted around in the corpse’s innards for another moment or two before drawing away and flopping back down on the ground where she belonged. I was already frowning. “We better burn it before it hatches.”
     He stood quiet for a long moment, studying the body, before repeating, “Hatches.”
     “Yep.” I didn’t look at him.
     “What the fuck’s goin on, Alice?” His tone had taken on a stern note, the no-nonsense, I’d-better-start-explaining-in-a-hustle voice. I sighed, because I wasn’t going to be explaining anything.
     “It’s mage business. Better just let us handle it.” I said it, and even as I did, I knew it wasn’t going to work. You can’t just wave supernatural creepiness under any Orderman’s nose, and expect them to leave well enough alone, and Irish was even more stubborn about it. That’s what made him their best.
     “Fucking right I will.”
     “You’ll have to.” I shrugged, smiled pleasantly, and pulled my smokes and lighter out. I plugged a cigarette in my mouth, lit it, and pushed my will through the little flame. Heat shimmers rolled across the room, and the body began to smoke. The first flicks of fire appeared in the eye lashes and brows, spreading down the clothes before the yellow flames whitened and the skin caught.
     It made a high-pitched whistle, like a lobster dropped in boiling water. No human body made that noise when it burned.
     “Out the back.” I said. “I’m doing the whole building.” I clicked the lighter shut, putting my will into the flaming body. Fire licked out across the floor in a spiral as I followed Irish out the back of the building.
     I armed the sweat off my forehead as I picked my way over the broken pavement behind the 7-11. Behind me, a rich yellow glow spilled out the half-open back door. I paused, looked back to make sure the whole building would go.
     “What’s goin on?” Irish asked again.
     I turned to look at him. Sure enough, I was getting the offended glare. I figured as much. “You know you’re going to lose this argument. You’ll yell at me, I’ll refuse to talk. We’ll fight, you’ll let me go, I’ll get away, and you’ll be pissy the next three or four times we run into each other. Why don’t we just skip to the part where I go back to my car? It’s fucking freezing out here, and my feet are killing me.”
     “Alice.” It was the warning tone, the voice he took on just before things started getting violent. Other people heard this tone of voice and dropped what they were doing to run like hell.
     “I’ll make a trade. You tell me how you ended up here tonight, and I’ll tell you what was wrong with the body.” I plucked the cigarette from my lips, spreading my hands wide. He stood, arms crossed, jaw set, eyes cold and angry. “No deal?”
     “What’ve the trick with the shadow?”
     I grinned. “Sure. I’ll throw that in.”
     “No, you’ll just tell me.”
     I lifted my eyebrows. “Really? We’re actually going to bust out a fight over a shadow puppet?” I flipped my cell phone out, checked the time. “I’d love to, but I’ve got a long night ahead of me. So, unless you want to spill, I’m going home.”
     He smiled, a thin, grim expression utterly lacking in humor. “I’ll find out one way or another.”
     “I could make the same threat. Catch you around.” With that, I turned on my heels and headed back towards my car. He let me go. He always did.

Black Alice by Marci Sischo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

SiteMeter.com:

Playing the Popularity Game:

This entry was posted on Friday, August 29th, 2008 at 9:00 am and is filed under Black Alice, Original Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.