Richard Kadrey - Dead Set

“Make yourself comfortable,” he said, releasing his grip on her sleeve. He pointed with the knife. “On the chair, sit on your hands.” Zoe walked to the chair and did as she was told, sliding her hands under her legs as she sat. The bird-faced man limped to the end of the bed and dropped down onto it. “What’s your name?” He stretched out his leg and winced as pain stabbed through him.

“Zoe.”

The man nodded. “I’m Prosper. Mr. Prosper to you.” He took out the flask, unscrewed it with one hand, and drank deeply. He kept a tight grip on the knife with the tip pointed in her direction. Zoe could tell that he was exhausted. He was sweating just from the effort of bringing her to the room. His lips were as drained as his gray face, and his hands shook.

It didn’t seem like a moment to be shy. “What’s wrong with your leg?” she asked.

“Never you mind about my leg.” Amber-colored apothecary bottles littered the top of a small bedside table. Zoe saw other bottles on the dresser and the floor next to the bed. She could only read one word on their labels, Laudanum .

Mr. Prosper was staring at her, studying her. A trace of a smile played at the edges of his pale lips. “Brilliant. I knew it the moment you arrived, you know. It felt like ice water running down my neck. Really, it was Hecate who felt you, but her excitement infected the rest of us. Made us all a bit mental. We’ve been waiting for you for a long time. How did you get here?”

“Through the sewers, then the tunnels. I followed Emmett.”

“Emmett?” His eyes were wet and blank. He gazed out the window, then back at her. “Ah, Ammut. Well, you’re the first who’s ever made it all the way here, though not the first who tried. Remarkable girl.”

“If you can tell me the way out, I’ll leave and never come back.”

He let out a deep, hard laugh, catching Zoe by surprise. He seemed so frail it looked like laughing might shake him apart completely. A moment later, the laughter dissolved into wet, phlegmy coughs.

“I’ll bet you would.” He stared past her, at the moon shining through the window. “It’s a tempting idea, just to see Hecate’s face. She’s so counting on you.”

That scared her, but she tried to keep it out of her voice. “Counting on me? For what?”

“Girlie, you’re her chance to be reborn,” he said. He pointed at her with the knife. “She needs a body. A living body. Oh, she has plans for you.” He smiled, his sagging skin creasing around his mouth. The blade twitched in his hand. “She’ll peel the skin right off you and wear you like a ball gown, all the way back to the world. And when she gets there, she’ll use her considerable powers to take revenge on every living soul.” He lifted the flask and drained it. “Of course, it’s as likely that when she draws that first gulp of air into her lungs, she’ll forget all about us down here and run off to be a girl again. It’s so hard predicting the actions of the insane.” His large, wet eyes were red at the edges. Beads of sweat, or maybe tears, slid down his sagging cheeks.

“You helped her trick me into coming down here?”

“Not me. Ammut.” He set the empty flask aside. A few drops leaked from the open top, leaving a dark stain on the duvet. “You’re not so special. Anyone would do. Anyone with the need to find him.” He turned and looked at the bottles at the head of the bed. “A girl. A boy. An old man dancing the Charleston. It didn’t matter. A body was all that mattered. Of course, a pretty young girl was the first choice, and here you are.” He slid up the length of the bed, wincing as he dragged his bad leg. The first bottle he picked up from the bedside table was empty. He threw it to the floor in disgust. Still holding the knife, he took the next bottle in one hand and pulled the cork with his teeth. He drank deeply. Clear liquid trickled out of the corners of his lips.

“So, he did trick me into coming down here.”

“Tricked. Trapped. Delivered you with a bow on to his mom. Yes, you were.”

“That was him on our mountain. Watching Valentine and me,” she said. It made her feel cold inside.

“What? Who?”

“Nothing. Emmett got me good.”

“That he did. That he did.”

Mr. Prosper let go of the knife and held the bottle with both hands. The blade glittered, resting against one thin leg. When he’d had his fill, he took a breath and said, “I was a powerful man back before your father or his father was born. I was mayor of Iphigene, back when it was still Calumet. She told me when she was gone, I could be mayor again. Just another lie.”

He was far away from her, and looked worse than ever, Zoe thought. “But you fucked it up somehow, right?” she said.

Mr. Prosper leered at her angrily, dizzy, curling his lip and fumbling for the knife. He tried to stand, but his leg wouldn’t take the weight, and he flopped back down on the bed. “Don’t imagine that I’m done yet, girlie.” He grabbed the knife and pointed it at her. “I won’t let Hecate have you, and if that means slitting your pretty throat, so be it.”

Zoe wondered if she could get her razor out, and if so, could she use it on Mr. Prosper before he used his knife on her? She slid her hands out from under her legs and laid them gently on the arms of the leather chair. Mr. Prosper didn’t seem to notice. Okay, she thought. “You were supposed to help Emmett, weren’t you? But something went wrong. Were you always a junkie?” she asked.

“Watch your mouth, brat,” said Mr. Prosper.

“That’s when Emmett realized he didn’t need you, isn’t it?” Prosper frowned at her, but his eyelids dropped. He blinked, trying to keep them open. Zoe’s heart beat madly in her chest. Instead of being afraid, she felt angry and reckless, fed up with all of Iphigene. She knew she was taking an awful chance, but she couldn’t think of anything else to do. “Is that what happened to your leg? You were so high that you fell, and then everyone knew how useless you were.”

When he didn’t speak, she thought he might have fallen asleep, but his head snapped up and he gestured with the knife. No. Wait. He’s too awake and he already has his knife out. Forget the razor. “She set the wolves, those man-beasts, on me. Her so-called children. Filth, all of them.” He rubbed his bad leg. “Who knew that after death you could feel such pain?” He drank again and closed his eyes. His voice was light and high-pitched, as if he were talking to a child.

“When she first came here she was beautiful, the most beautiful creature any of us had ever seen. She came from the hinterlands with her black dogs. From over the farthest hills, somewhere very far, very ancient. At first, she was a powerful, reassuring presence among the new souls. She’d greet them when the buses dropped them off. She’d help them get settled and find places to live, places where they’d be comfortable-apartments, longhouses, stilt houses in the forest, and what have you. She was inexhaustible. Everyone knew her, her and her dogs.”

Zoe started to say something, but saw that Mr. Prosper was somewhere else now, lost in drugs and memories.

“No one thought much about it when some of the newcomers went missing. It takes a while to settle in. We assumed they’d found family or somewhere more comfortable. At City Hall we dismissed the stories of the ravaged, sucked-dry souls she left behind while traveling here from the back of beyond.

“By the time any of us who were in a position to do anything about it were aware of the truth, it was too late. Her dogs were everywhere. Snakes, too, but they mostly stay hidden. The whole city was under her spell. They were her army. . not that she needed one. When she marched into my office and told me that she was queen of the new city of Iphigene, I knew she was right. There was almost nothing left of Calumet by then. And when she stole the sun from the sky, we let her. Never fought her. We never even raised our voices. She didn’t come here to lead a revolt. She came here to show us that our time was over. Once we understood that, once we saw that the she-wolf was truly our queen, there was nothing left to do but give her everything, even ourselves.”