Nyx Smith - Fade to Black

Cars and bodies littered the roadway. Gunfire stammered and roared. "This one!" Minx exclaimed, tugging Monk around in a circle. She thrust him right at the sprawled body of a woman, a very large woman in clinging reddish clothes. "Now! Do it now!"

"What…?"

She thrust him down, his head to the woman's, his mouth to the woman's mouth, and then with two fingers clamped his nostrils shut. Monk grunted in surprise, abruptly exhaling-just once.

Maybe that was the wrong thing to do.

"No, Monk! No!" Minx exclaimed. "Not like that!"

Abruptly, the woman jerked and stiffened beneath him and her eyes flared open wide, glaring a fiery scarlet-red.

"Oh, drek!" Minx cried.

The woman began clawing Monk's face. She moaned louder and louder, like a creature risen from the grave and bent on exacting a terrible vengeance.

"FIEND!" Mink shrieked.

Monk stared, wide-eyed, till suddenly Minx was tugging him back, right onto his feet.

"TOO LATE! RUN, MONK, RUN!"

They ran. They ran across the width of the street-dodging around smashed cars, jumping over bodies-and in through a doorway and up a flight of stairs. Monk glanced back only once. The woman he had breathed into was up on her feet and staggering around. She grabbed some slag in reddish camos and tore his eyes right out of his head.

Monk opened his mouth and screamed.

The slag screamed, too.

A door slammed open. Monk pitched forward through the doorway. The door slammed again to his rear as he tumbled to the floor, onto his back. In some little, one-room apartment Panting, gasping, thrusting back her hair and groaning, "Oh godddddd…," Minx knelt down beside him and laid her head on his chest. "That was the wrong thing to do, you little booty," Minx said, catching her breath. "She must've been dead already."

Monk gaped, panting. "Dead?"

Abruptly, Minx's hands were moving gently all over his face, and she gazed down at him with a red-hued look of genuine affection. "Oh, Monkie … are you tired?" she crooned. "You must be tired. Like you're drained or something."

Now that she mentioned it…

"Come're," she murmured. She pressed her mouth down over hi, and exhaled. Monk felt his whole body tingle with excitement. When she did it again, breathed into his mouth again, he inhaled deeply. It was sexy and wild and it made him feel like, like… Like sex. Better than sex.

Later, when they were lying nude in each other's arms, Minx whispered, "Are you still hungry?"

Monk thought about that. "I'm not sure."

Minx smiled and snuggled close. "You're so booty."

"You're all red," Monk said. "Everything's red."

Minx giggled. "Of course."

The door from the alley led into a narrow hallway that ended at a squarish room crowded with artifacts: chairs, a couch, kitchen appliances, trideo, simsense gear, bookdisks, chips, several cyberdecks, and what looked like the scattered components for several more cyberdecks. Bandit had no particular interest in any of this. He investigated further. A small room off to the left turned out to be a lavatory. A third room looked like a bedroom.

The character of the bedroom stood out. Life glimmered here, though faintly. The spiritual essence of the world seemed to matter here. This room must be investigated further.

Bandit returned to his body.

"Okay?" Rico asked from the front of the van.

"Yes," Bandit said. "Interesting."

"You didn't see anything dangerous?"

"Not likely."

Back from his brief trip onto the astral, Bandit sat cross-legged in the rear of Thorvin's van, amid a clutter of tools and spare parts. He waited while Rico gave instructions to the rest of the group. This deep into Sector 6, Little Asia, they were probably safe, thanks to Piper's connections, but they would take no unnecessary chances. Dok and Filly would stay on guard here in the van. Everyone else would take a squat, go into the small apartment Bandit had scouted and shack out.

Bandit followed Rico and Piper, Shank, Thorvin, Surikov, and Marena Farris out of the van, across the alley, and into the cluttered apartment.

"You sure this is okay?" Rico said.

"I'm sure," Piper replied. "The slag who lived here caught big-time feedback. The rent's paid till the end of the month."

"Who's the slag?"

"Someone I know from the Irons."

Farris and Surikov took seats at opposite ends of the couch. Shank paused, watching them. Bandit stepped into the bedroom.

The air smelled of incense. The walls had been painted to look like a forest. A few plants, dried and nearly withered, sat in colored pots. Figurines and shiny trinkets decorated the chest of drawers, the bureau, and the small table in one corner, along with a few animal pelts and bones, vials of crystals, and a small drum. A pair of sleeping bags lay on the floor under a veil of mosquito netting. Beneath the pillows at the head-end of the sleeping bags lay a small cache of drugs, feel-good stuff, illegal, and a book, The Shamanic Tradition, by Arthur Garrett, Department of Occult Studies, U.C.L.A.

None of this had any real value. Bandit flipped through the book by Garrett, just curious, then dropped it onto the sleeping bags. The character of the room suggested a medicine lodge, where a shaman might do long magic, but that impression was apparently a lie.

The book by Garrett as much as proved it.

Fluffy stuff, very philosophical.

The real surprise came from the closet. Bandit assensed something there, something hinting of power. He found an open black plastic case that was just under a meter long. Inside was a flute, a big one, apparently carved out of wood and ornamented with shamanic symbols. Bandit ran his fingers lightly over the wood. On the astral plane the flute was a living entity-visible and real-alive. Softly radiant with energy. Like a focus, a weak one, only recently made.

Odd…

The flute seemed to call to him, as if from across a great distance, faintly, so faintly, like some part of himself that he had forgotten long ago.

He wondered…

He considered the sword hanging from his belt. He had carried it a long time. When he was younger and less skilled in the ways of Raccoon, he had sometimes needed the sword to defend himself, but he had not used it in years. He would probably never use it again. He had come to understand that such violence as a sword might do was not compatible with the ways of Raccoon. Maybe it was time he gave up this part of himself completely. Maybe he should leave the sword in exchange for this flute, which somehow seemed representative of an older part of himself, his life, his being, and a part more important now.

No question it would be a fair exchange.

"You're making a mistake," Farris said.

"Naturally, you would say that," Surikov replied.

"This won't work out as you think."

"Why should that bother you?"

"Ansell, you know I have only your best interests in mind. I still care about what happens to you."

"I should believe that? After all that's happened?"

"Yes, yes, you should. I was wrong, I know that now. I'm sorry. I was afraid, deathly afraid. I know that's no excuse, but can you really hold it against me? What would you have thought in my position? I'd been taken from my room in the middle of. the night by people I didn't even know. People with guns. I knew you were angry with me. I knew you blamed me. What else could I have thought?"

"You really thought I wanted you killed?"

"I know that's not very rational. I wasn't thinking very rationally at the time. Maybe I wasn't thinking at all. I don't know. I'm just afraid that you're making the same mistake, that you aren't thinking. You feel you've been betrayed, not just by me. You're full of anger. Maybe you feel that going to Prometheus Engineering will be a kind of revenge…"