Dead Man Rising

"I didn't grab him in time. He was moving quicker than I've ever seen him move. He threw himself at Keller and Mirovitch—" I repeated it through the lump in my throat, my voice barely recognizable. Hoarse and wrecked, the voice of a stu

Gabe's hand closed around my right shoulder. She squeezed just a little. "You already gave your statement, Da

"I should have caught him." Why did my voice, as hoarse and ruined as it was, sound so young? "I should have caught him." I held up one golden hand. "All the strength Japhrimel gave me, I should have caught him." My face crumpled again, soundlessly contorting into a mask. A tragedy mask, the darker half of laughter's coin. The mask I'd seen on so many other faces when a loved one passed on.

Gabe whispered something to Eddie.

"Goddamn." The dark circles under his eyes were almost gone. He looked better. "Look, Da

"I'll be fine," I said tonelessly, hoarse. "Got work to do. The others on the list—"

"They've been taken to safehouses," Gabe said. "The building security net included stillcams. We've got a few good shots of Lourdes. They're all over the holovids, make the press work for us for once. Someone will call him in, and we'll take him down." Her mouth twisted slightly to one side. "Hard."

It was a promise of revenge, one that should have made me grateful. I felt nothing; the numbness of a razor drawn swiftly through flesh, the breathless moment before the pain starts, before the blood begins to flow.

"Nobody will see him." The ectoplasm had vanished, leaving only a faint shimmer on the bodies; the other victims had been found too late, no trace of ectoplasmic attack remaining. If we'd seen the slimy eggwhite of a ka taking shape in the physical world, we would have been more cautious. A lot more cautious. "Any more than anyone would see you if you really wanted to stay invisible. And he's… I think… Gabe, he's got Mirovitch… inside him."

"You saw Mirovitch? But I thought you said he…" She looked as confused as I felt.

Focus! The sharp stinging slap of the deep voice of my conscience jerked my head up. I'd been staring at my boots. "Gabe. Look. Poly told me that the kids all took a piece of Mirovitch. What if Keller took the last piece? Or somehow… I don't know. The first death was a decade after Mirovitch's… disappearance. Maybe the Headmaster wasn't as dead as everyone thought."

Gabe nodded. Her sleek hair dipped forward over her shoulders. "So he's out for revenge?"

"Revenge, maybe, who knows? But most certainly collecting." I waited until Gabe absorbed this, then tossed the cup of coffee into the street. Steaming liquid spilled out. I watched as the steam twisted into angular shapes, dissipated. "I don't know if safehouses are going to be any good. I don't know how he's tracking them."

"You think Mirovitch is inside Lourdes?" Gabe's eyes were wide and dark. It was the stuff of nightmares, a psi carrying something like that around. A mule carrying a Feeder's ka.

A Feeder, hungry for Power. And instead of feeding from random victims, or having a mild case of being Feeder, Mirovitch was inside Keller, and taking back whatever the kids took from him years ago. Claiming his own. It made sense. The worst, absolutely worst type of Feeder. Hungry, hard to kill, and so very close now to collecting the leftover pieces of itself and becoming a fullblown ka, moving from mule to mule and draining each one as it went, turning them into soulless zombies—or worse, into Feeders too. A spreading contagion, replicating itself wherever it could.

"I'm guessing it's a ka, Gabe. Nothing else seems to fit." My throat stung, my eyes watering from the sunlight. Yes, only the sunlight. "I have something I have to do." Straining for politeness. It was a long reach.

"Da

I shook Gabe's hand from my shoulder. She backed up half a step, and I saw the sudden flicker in Eddie's aura. "You don't have to worry," I told them both, still in that little-girl voice I had no idea I still possessed. I heard the hurt clearly in my voice, too worn to camouflage or swallow it for once. "I'm not going to lash out at you. You could have a little more faith in me."

"I know you wouldn't," Gabe said. "But you've got that look again, Da

"That's about right." The ambulance hover rocked a little on its springs as my tone turned chill. Eddie shivered. The wind rose slightly, keening through the broken edges of the brownstone above. "I was too fucking young to kill Mirovitch all those years ago. I should have, I wished I could. I used to dream about it. This time, I'm old enough and armed enough to do it." I looked up at the smoking hole torn in the building. "I need to find out about this Bryce Smith guy—if he was just a cover for Lourdes. What the co

Gabe nodded. The purposeful milling around the scene continued behind her. Two coroner's hovers lifted off, the whine of hovercells cutting through the sound of the gathered crowd behind the yellow plasilica tape marking off the borders of the investigation. I saw flashes pop, and guessed the holovid reporters were out in force. My eyes followed the hovers as they rose gracefully, then banked and flew away toward the station house and the morgue. Sunlight stung my eyes even more, making hot tears roll down my cheeks. "Hospital." I winced at the childlike breathiness of my voice. "They've taken him to the hospital?"

Gabe nodded. "Yeah. Come with us, Da

No. Please, no. "His sword. You don't need that for evidence, do you?"

Eddie made a brief restless movement. I was being rude again.

I was too tired to care. Japhrimel had never told me about the weariness of demons, the weariness of a being that didn't need sleep. A weariness that seemed to sink into every bone, every thought. Or was it a weariness peculiar to hedaira? I had nobody I could ask.

I was adrift again, as if I was twelve years old and shipwrecked by the death of the only family I had ever known. Again.

"You know it's yours." Gabe actually looked hurt. "I'm so sorry, Da

My lips puckered as if I tasted something sour. Maybe it was only failure. I didn't even know that myself, Gabe. "Thanks." My voice sounded as if it was coming from someone else, someone whose harsh tone was flat and terribly loaded with Power. If the god hadn't temporarily denied me the ability to use the demon Power I'd been granted, I might have leveled the building. Or even more.

Probably more.

Definitely more.

"Don't, Da

Don't do this to myself? Don't DO this to myself? "Who else should I do it to? I'm kind of out of victims, in case you hadn't noticed. Everyone who gives a damn about me dies sooner or later. You should be getting as far away as—"

I didn't realize I was shouting until Gabe clapped her hand over my mouth, stepping close. Her dark eyes—human eyes—were bare inches from mine; she was much shorter than me, but I was sitting on the edge of the hover's step, so her nose hovered next to mine, her mouth on the other side of her hand. Her breath brushed my face, and the smell of kyphii and her perfume mixed, driving through my nose. My demon-based scent flared, a wave of musk and spice, and her pupils dilated slightly. That was all.