Dark Duets Part 40

"Good," Liath said, fitting his fingers into his bra.s.s knuckles. "The time for watching is over. Tell me when they're almost here."

Toby stared into s.p.a.ce, looking like he might be drunk or just banjaxed. Liath heard footsteps and voices approaching.

"-swear I saw him, big as day," Timbers was saying.

"You been down c.h.i.n.ktown, suckin' on a pipe? He's dead! We buried him."

"Wasn't just me. You heard the others. They saw him-"

Liath jumped out in front of them. Timbers was the closest so he swung at his face. "Here's your proof, you traitorous guttersnipe!"

The git tried to turn away, but Liath caught the side of his head with a bra.s.s-bolstered fist and he went down like a dead man.

The scarred man was quick. An automatic knife appeared in his hand as if by magic. He was already slas.h.i.+ng at Toby as the blade snicked open. Toby cried out as it gashed his flank and blood splashed from the wound. Scar whirled toward Liath, aiming a backhanded slash for his throat. Liath raised his arm to fend it off, saving his throat, but the blade pierced his arm through and through.

The man's mouth dropped open as he recognized Liath.

"You!" he cried, releasing the knife handle and stumbling back. "It's really you!"

He turned and ran and Liath would have given chase but for Toby, who was down on his knees, groaning with pain and clutching his b.l.o.o.d.y flank.

And then the matter of Liath's pierced forearm. Why didn't it hurt more?

Never mind that now. He turned to Toby. "We need to be getting you to a hospital."

"No! Miss Basemore can fix me."

"Well, then, what about Timbers? How do you think we'll get both you and him all the way to Harlem?"

Toby was staring at Timbers. "I don't think he'll be much use to you in Harlem or anywhere else."

Liath turned and saw the weasel's blank staring eyes.

"But I hit him only once!"

"That was all it took, I guess."

"Do I not know me own strength then?" Liath looked at his pierced arm. "And why aren't I bleeding?"

Toby struggled to rise and Liath helped him to his feet.

"Revenants are terribly strong. And they don't bleed."

Liath grabbed the knife handle and pulled the blade free. He felt only mild discomfort, and not a drop of his blood had spilled.

"YOU PROMISED TO keep him safe!" Rasheeda said through her teeth as she st.i.tched up Toby's flank.

The young man lay on his side on the resurrection table while she worked on him. Scar's knife had pierced the skin and underlying fatty layer-lots of bleeding but not deep enough to damage any organs.

"Well, he's safe enough now, isn't he?" Liath said.

"I'm fine," said Toby. He winced as Rasheeda jabbed a curved sewing needle through the skin at the edge of his wound, but otherwise seemed to be enjoying his boss's hands on him.

"You've lost a lot of blood."

"He's young," Liath said. "Feed him a steak and he'll be good as new in two shakes." Liath raised his arm. "Meself, on the other hand . . ."

He'd rolled his s.h.i.+rtsleeve up to the elbow and was inspecting his own knife wound, such as it was. The edges had sealed over, leaving two opposing seams on the upper and lower surfaces of his forearm.

"I told you," Toby said. "Revenants don't bleed."

"How can you bleed?" Rasheeda said. "You have no blood."

"No blood . . ." Liath stared at his arm. "How is that possible?"

He'd refolded Scar's automatic knife down on Bleecker Street. Now he removed it from his pocket, found the b.u.t.ton on the fancy ivory handle, and pressed it. The blade snapped out, bright and fine-edged. He pressed the point against the belly of his forearm. It felt dull rather than sharp. He pressed harder until it pierced the skin, causing only mild discomfort. He dragged the point toward his elbow, opening a four-inch gash that revealed the layers of the skin and the yellow fat beneath, but not a drop of blood.

"Like cutting open a dead man."

He looked up to find Toby and Rasheeda staring at him.

"Well?" she said.

"But I'm not dead. I walk, I talk. I may not be knowing a lot about science, but I know that blood powers the muscles and the brain. Cut a man's throat and he bleeds to death. If I've no blood, what's powering me muscles?"

Rasheeda frowned. "That has long puzzled me. The ancient Veda never explained it. It calls revenants khokhala and-"

"What's that mean?"

She concentrated on knotting the thread of her latest st.i.tch. "Hollow."

Liath looked at his bloodless wound, already healing. "Well, I guess I'm that. Hollow of blood anyways. What else am I hollow of now? A soul, perhaps?"

She looked up at him. "Some philosophers say there's no such thing as a soul."

"They'll be heathens, then."

"Irrelevant. Lots of 'heathens,' as you say, believe in souls. I was raised a Hindu, and Hindus believe in souls."

"You say that like you no longer believe."

She shrugged. "When you've resurrected as many of the dead as I have, it gives you cause to wonder. Consider: If your soul truly traveled on after your murder, then how can you be alive again and still be you?"

"Who else would I be?"

"I don't know. That German sailor's life force went into you-why aren't you speaking German and yearning for the sea?"

"That so-called life force doesn't pump blood through me veins."

"That's because your heart's not beating."

"What?"

He pressed his hand against his chest and felt nothing. He pressed harder-still nothing. He'd not noticed.

"Dear G.o.d!"

"You don't need to breathe, either."

"But I do." He drew in a breath and let it out. "See?"

"I didn't say you couldn't. I said you don't need to-except to talk, that is."

Liath felt as if the world were pulling away from him.

Her earlier words came back.

. . . if your soul truly traveled on after your murder. . .

"I've been robbed of me soul!"

Toby grimaced as Rasheeda again jabbed the needle through his skin.

"Don't be ridiculous!" she said. "Even if you had a soul, I didn't send it on. Your murderer did."

Hollow . . . no blood, no heartbeat, no breath, no soul, and a hunger for human offal . . . he'd become an unholy thing.

"You've robbed me of an afterlife then! I'll never get to heaven!"

She made a clucking noise. "a.s.suming there's such a thing as a soul, and a.s.suming there's such a place as heaven, did you really believe yours would be welcomed there?"

Liath opened his mouth, then closed it. Good point, but that still didn't lessen the feeling that he'd lost something of infinite value.

"What in G.o.d's name am I then?"

"A khokhala."

"Just a word! What allows me to move, to think?"

"The Veda says a khokhala is animated by Ajnata."

"Another heathen word! And what, pray tell, would that mean?"

She shrugged. "It translates to English as 'Nameless,' which I suppose is a way of saying they don't know."

"Well, something is powering me muscles and me brain-such as it is."

"My theory is that it comes from the aether-Aristotle's fifth element."

"Well, if you're calling it 'aether' it's not exactly nameless now, is it."

"Well, no . . ."

For the first time since he'd met her she looked unsure. Liath found he preferred her usual supreme confidence.

He waved the knife at her. "See, aether or not, something is fueling all your cocoa-holidays-"

"Khokhalas," she said.

"Whatever the name, something is powering us all, and that means you're running up a terrible bill."

She laughed. "It's not like electricity!"

"How do you know?" he said, feeling uneasy. "We're tapped into something. Call it aether or fifth element or 'nameless'-"

"Ajnata."

"-or whatever you like, but someday the bill is going to come due. What then? What will the price be? And who will be paying? You? Me?"

She shook her head. "You're being silly."

"Nothing is free, luv. There's always a balance to be struck. It's a rule of the world-of the whole universe. Sure as the sun rises tomorrow, that bill's gonna come due someday, and I'm fearing there'll be h.e.l.l to pay when it does."

3. Under a New Moon Rasheeda had been under the impression she'd be meeting with a bereaved widow wis.h.i.+ng to arrange a funeral for her husband. With a shock, she recognized the woman as soon as she entered the room, and knew she wasn't married.

"Madame Louisa?" she said, rising behind her desk. "I don't understand."

Louisa's smile had a smug twist. "Don't fuss at your a.s.sistant. I played the grieving new widow for him." She faked a sob as she dabbed at her eyes with a lace handkerchief. "And rather convincingly, if I do say so myself."

Rasheeda hadn't grown up in the States, so she wasn't familiar enough with American dialects to know if Louisa's drawl was real or affected. The lady was dressed fas.h.i.+onably in a long-sleeved, form-fitting dress with a square neckline and a cuira.s.s bodice. One never would have guessed that she ran a high-end bordello.

"And now I understand even less."

Louisa laughed. "Y'all have some wine perhaps?"

"I keep a bottle of brandy in my desk for some of my more fainthearted clients."

"That'll do, I suppose. Pour us both a taste. You may very well need it before I'm through."

Rasheeda did not like the sound of that.

"Whatever do you mean?" she said as she withdrew two snifters and a bottle of Armagnac from her bottom right drawer.

Louisa lowered herself into one of the chairs on the far side of the desk.

"The subject is the servant I hired from you."

"Katrina?"