Tim Waggoner: Nekropolis

Skully normally doesn’t put up with much crap. He keeps a silver broadaxe behind the counter, but he hardly ever has to use it. Rumor is that he has ties to the Dominari, Nekropolis’s version of the Mafia, and while he’s never admitted it to me, he hasn’t denied it, either. A rumor like that, true or not, can head off a lot of trouble before it starts. If the Descension celebration hadn’t been in full swing, and Honani already likely drunk before he even came in here, he would’ve had more sense than to act like such a jackass. Probably. But Skully didn’t reach for his axe. Instead he looked over at me-at least I think he looked at me; it’s kind of hard to tell when the person you’re talking about doesn’t have any eyes. I nodded. Show time. If I still had a pulse, it would have been racing.

I stood up.

“My friend,” I said just a bit too loudly, “you are the butt-ugliest sonofabitch in the city.” And considering the citizenry of Nekropolis, that was saying something.

The thick muscles in Honani’s shoulders rippled and tensed beneath his fur. The other people (and I use the term extremely loosely) in the bar drew in surprised gasps of air. Those that breathed, anyway.

Honani turned around. His lips curled back from his sizable teeth in a snarl, and his eyes burned feral yellow.

“I ain’t your friend.”

The lyke was damned intimidating, but I stood my ground. There’s only one cardinal rule when it comes to surviving in Nekropolis: Show No Fear.

“That’s true. If you were my friend, I’d suggest you have a street-surgeon remove your ass and graft it onto your face. It’d be a vast improvement.”

The big lyke just stood there a moment, blinking in confusion while his alcohol-sodden brain struggled to process what I’d said. Either he figured it out or decided to give up and just assume I’d insulted him. Either way, he let out an ear-splitting roar and came at me.

You know the old cliche about how time seems to slow down when you’re in danger? It’s true. Unfortunately, being dead, my reflexes aren’t what they once were, so the shift in time perception didn’t do me any good. But twenty years’ experience as a cop can make up for a whole hell of a lot, and thus I was able to side-step just as Honani’s claws-which had lengthened to twice their previous size and were still growing-raked the air where my chest had been a moment earlier.

I was a bit slow, however, and the lyke’s razor-sharp talons sliced through my Marvin the Martian tie, decapitating the cartoon spaceman. I watched Marvin’s headless body flutter to the floor.

“Damn it! Do you know how hard it is to come by ties like that around here?”

Honani didn’t sympathize with my sartorial loss. Instead, he lunged forward, mouth wide open, jaw distended farther than should have been anatomically possible, and fastened his twisted yellow teeth on my shoulder. I didn’t feel a thing-except regret that along with my tie, I’d also lost a perfectly good suit jacket and shirt.

But before he could take a hunk out of me, he pulled back, his face scrunched up in disgust, and spat great gobs of foam and saliva to the floor. “You’re a deader!” he accused.

“Guilty as charged. You’d have known that if you’d bothered to smell me.” Mixbloods’ patchwork physiology doesn’t always function properly. It was quite possible his sense of smell was no better than an ordinary human’s.

Though the idiot should’ve been able to tell just by looking. It’d been a while since my last application of preservative spells, and I wasn’t too fresh-skin gray, dry, and beginning to flake. I probably didn’t taste too good either.

As if emphasizing this last point, Honani spat once more then looked at me with disdain. “Go back to the Boneyard, zombie. Your kind isn’t wanted around here.” And then he turned and walked toward the bar.

Honani’s reaction was understandable. Most zombies are little more than undead automatons under the control of whoever raised them, and hardly a threat to a lyke as strong as Honani. But I’m not most zombies.

I removed a glass vial full of gray dust from the inner pocket of my suit jacket and pried off the cork. And then I made a leap for Honani.

My reflexes may be slower, and I’m no stronger than I was when alive, but I can get the job done when I have to. I threw my left arm around Honani’s chest and with my right jammed the vial into the lyke’s massive mouth and emptied the contents. There wasn’t much in the vial, but a little was all that I needed.

Honani choked and sputtered and then I felt a distant tearing sensation. I stepped back from the lyke, still clutching the mostly empty vial. Something was…and then I realized what had happened: my left arm was gone. The preservative spells were breaking down fast.

Honani whirled around and brandished my detached limb like a club. Behind him, I saw Skully lifting his silver axe, ready to strike, but I shook my head and he lowered his weapon.

“You…damn…corpse!” Honani advanced on me, no doubt intending to pound me into grave mold with my own arm. But he only managed a few steps before he doubled over in pain. He dropped my arm and it hit the floor with a meaty plap! His breathing became harsh, labored, and he started whining like a wounded animal, which, I suppose, he was.

“You shouldn’t have killed her, Honani,” I said. “Lyra was a simple working girl; it wasn’t her fault you couldn’t get it up.” Like I said, mixblood physiology doesn’t always work right.

He fell to his knees, breathing rapidly now. His entire body shook, as if a great struggle were occurring within him.

“That dust I dumped into your mouth was part of Lyra’s ashes. Not much, but enough. You took her life; now you’re going to give it back.”

He rolled onto his side, quivering uncontrollably in the throes of a violent seizure. His eyes had lost all of their anger and wildness and were now rolled up in their sockets.

This was it.

With my remaining hand, I reached into one of my jacket’s outer pockets and removed a small clay jar. I shook off the lid, which was attached by a short length of twine, then knelt down next to Honani’s head and held the open jar in front of his mouth.

His exertions lessened bit by bit and finally his body grew still. And then, as I watched, thin whitish wisps curled forth from between his teeth, lazily at first, but then the jar’s magic began to draw them in, and they flowed out of his mouth faster and faster, until at last they were done. I sat the jar on the floor, put the lid back on tight, and then slipped Honani’s soul into my pocket.

Honani-or rather his body-began to stir. I put my right hand beneath one of the lyke’s sweaty armpits and lifted. I don’t know how much help I was, but a few moments later, the body was on its feet again.

Lyra swayed dizzily and for a moment I thought she might fall, but then she steadied herself and gave me a toothy smile.

“It worked!” The voice was Honani’s, but yet it wasn’t.

I nodded. “Of course. Didn’t Papa Chatha say it would?” I decided not to tell her that sometime Papa’s spells failed, often in quite spectacular-and deadly-fashion. Why spoil the moment?

She ran her hands across her new body. Luckily, Ho-nani’s claws had retracted during the struggle for possession of his form, or else she would have sliced herself to ribbons.

“It feels so strange…and I’m male now, aren’t I?” She reached down to check and I politely looked away.

“Yes,” I said. “But it’s better than being dead, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes, much!” And then she looked at me. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-”

I held up my remaining hand. “That’s okay. I know what you meant.” Would I have traded in my undead carcass for Honani’s body? Maybe. Probably. I don’t know.