Anthology: SHADOWRUN: Spells and Chrome

A flare of anger. "Listen, don't give me any of your self-righteous bullshit. You can't imagine my life, what I've done, how it was after my wife vanished. My world changed just like that. One second you're having coffee and the next, everything's gone."

She wasn't cowed. She was a brawler, like Rachel. "So you and your people go around fixing the world, repairing the breaks, sealing rifts-but it'll still be the same old tired Earth, right? Just one with a lot of bandages. It's like trying to reverse time, wake up in the morning younger than you were when you went to sleep. You can't do it. If I was a shrink, I'd say that you guys are trying to fix yourselves. Frankly, that sounds pretty damned futile. There's always more pain."

"Sure, but you got to have hope. You said it: You think you're never going to smile again. One day, you do-or you trick yourself into thinking you can. Maybe… I don't know, maybe it's the same damned thing. But I can't just do nothing. If I sit around accepting the world the way it is, I might as well have put that bullet into my…" He bit off the rest.

They said nothing for a time. In the quiet, the wind stirred eucalyptus with a papery rustle. Finally, she murmured, "Do you remember the day you did? Really smiled again? Felt like, okay, this is good, I can go on?"

No fight in her voice now. His chest burned. "Yeah, I do."

"When?"

"Today. Now." The words were out before he could recall them-or maybe he didn't want to. He saw only her aura now, so bright and alive, and his Rachel was dead and there was nothing he could do to bring her back. Yet there was this woman and this place and no one-not even the Rebbe-listening, and the need for her hummed in his veins. "Here. With you."

When she didn't respond, he felt like an ass. "Fuck, I'm sorry. I'm tired. I shouldn't…"

"Shut up," and then he felt her warm breath slant across his neck. She lifted her face and he sighed into her mouth, and when he dropped his hand to the swell of her breast, she made a sound deep in her throat.

A little later, when she cried out and called him by another man's name, he was past caring. • • •

She lay with her head on his chest. "How did she die?"

He massaged her scalp. Her hair was silken, her scent spicy. "The plane vanished. No wreckage. No bodies. Nothing."

"A rift?"

"I'd like to think so because then she could still be alive on some other metaplane, but…" He paused. "You remind me of her. It's weird."

"Yeah, tell me about it." She pressed her head against his chest again. "When I saw you, I thought: Lee. How strange is that, that we both have the same experience?"

"Strange." He laughed. "You're talking to a guy who does magic."

"Like, all kinds?"

"Some, but I'm also kind of specialized. I… bind. Sure, I can conjure-banish, hurl a couple energy bolts, stuff like that-but the Rebbe recruits us for our special talents. Binding is mine. I pull and contain wild or free spirits."

"Exorcism."

"Sort of. The process has its roots in old Torah mysticism. I bind. Most often it's a spirit, but sometimes it's binding as in sewing, or knitting rips between one metaplane and the next. That legend I told you? Same principle: The Kabbalist literature's riddled with stories about shedim bound in mountains, or deep in the oceans."

"And you guys put them back? But how do you contain it until you can…?" Abruptly, she pushed up and stared down into his face. "You. You're the vessel. You're the bottle they put the genie into."

"For a while, yeah. You know, it's really not as horrible as you think." That was a lie; it was awful, like being pregnant with some kind of beaky monster gnawing at his insides. Only the Rebbe had the power to dispel, so until Daniel returned to Safed, he endured. Every encounter depleted him, left him weak as a kitten and his mana stained by evil. The Rebbe said that he was a living embodiment of a quelippah, the shell within which evil might be contained and then purified. Daniel's life with Mossad, the secrets he'd carried and the people and metahumans he'd killed, had toughened him-or marked him, he was never sure, and he still suffered. Given his past, maybe that was okay.

"What about reincarnation?" she asked.

"What about it?"

"Do you believe in it? Because I got to tell you, what you do, this binding stuff, taking in spirits… it feels the same."

Was it? He had never summoned a spirit, though he knew the mashiva, the summoning incantation. But summoning was forbidden to him as it was to all the Rebbe's followers. Not that spirit possession was undesirable: He knew many in the Rebbe's circle who continually strived to make themselves pure enough to become ibbur, to host the soul of another. There were stories from long ago of acolytes who dug shallow graves alongside the tombs of the righteous and prayed to be so invaded if only for a short time. But the Rebbe was clear: Their job was to repair the world, to perform tikkun olam using the one, true Kabbalah and not the bastardization of the tradition practiced by the goyim.

Besides, he would never be pure enough. Not after all he'd done.

He said, "Well, I get what you're driving at, but it's totally different. My tradition calls it gilgul. But that can only happen to the very good and if the host spirit is willing to give up its place in the body. I'm not very good."

"But look at us. We've both lost people we love, and we've been drawn together to this place."

"Alana, I'm not Lee. There's only me in here."

"I know that. I'm not asking you to be Lee. I can never be Rachel. But there's something between us. You feel it, right?"

He gathered her in his arms. "I feel you. Has it occurred to you that we're seeing the reflection of what we want and not what's real?"

"This is real." She brushed her lips against his. She pressed his hand to her breast. "I'm real. Maybe this is our fate-to be here, to be together."

"Alana, I can't…"

"Why not? If the rift's there, it's been there off and on for centuries. Millennia. You could stay here. We could."

He was tempted. To be free of the ever-watchful presence of the Rebbe, even if it was a shackle he'd donned willingly. (Had he? Could any man a hair's breadth from suicide be said to be in his right mind?) Free of the world and its demands. Just… free. Could the Rebbe even project into this valley? He didn't know, though he thought not; surely, the Rebbe would've come looking for him already and since he hadn't… God, he deserved some happiness. He was so tired, but… "I'm sorry, but I can't." He took her face in his hands and kissed first one cheek and then the other, and tasted salt. "You know I can't. Don't you see? I'd be exchanging one prison for another. We could never leave. As soon as we're within range of a node…"

"Shadowrunners do it."

"What kind of life is that? Alana, I have to finish what I've begun."

"No, you don't have to. You want to." She straddled his body, her hands flat on his chest. Her shark's tooth was an ivory teardrop in the hollow of her throat. "There's an old saying amongst my people: Kupau wau i ka mano… I am finished to the big shark, all consumed by the big shark, I am finished."

"Your people celebrate becoming dinner?"

She twisted a handful of his chest hair. "Don't be a smart ass. Sharks are single-minded, they don't stop. You're like that. You're consumed. You've given yourself over to this Rebbe of yours…"

"Yes, but not for tonight," he said, and held her close. "Tonight I give myself to you. I give myself to us."

"Then stay with me as long as you can," she murmured into his mouth, "and love me. Love me."

May 9

He was cold. His head hurt. His chest felt like he'd broken every single rib in maybe three places. He tried pulling in air. Had a panicky instant when nothing came but then did, only hard, like he was sucking air through a straw. Jesus… His brain was woolly, his thoughts mushy… was he running out of air? How long was he out? A lancet of pain, and he moaned.