Darren Shan: Procession of the dead

"What makes you think there'll be any?"

"The blind men's messengers said that through you I would learn the truth."

I pinned the transmitter to my shirt, just beneath the collar. I didn't look upon Paucar Wami as an ally-he'd rip my heart out if it served his purpose, and not think twice about it-but he'd saved my life a few times now. I owed him.

"Enjoy your meeting." Wami grinned and peeled away.

Shocked faces greeted me in the lobby. I smiled at a startled receptionist and requested a meeting with The Cardinal. She buzzed up and stared with disbelief as I slipped off my shoes and handed them over. Moments later Ford Tasso appeared, face dark, eyes black, fists clenched. "You came back," he growled.

"I was homesick." I shrugged.

He smiled viciously. "You've got balls, kid. I like you, even though you killed Vincent and led me on a wild-goose chase. I think we could have been friends under different circumstances. I'll miss you."

"I'm not dead yet," I told him.

"Aren't you?" he said.

We boarded the elevator and ascended to the fifteenth. Everybody we passed in the corridor shot us darting, curious glances. They were stunned to see me. Ford left me at the door to The Cardinal's office. "See you later," he said.

"You think so?"

"Of course. I always clear up the bodies around here."

I entered.

The Cardinal's face was scarred and puffy, proof that our fight hadn't been a figment of my imagination, that my healing was real, that my year in the city hadn't been a dream. His fingers were steepled, eyes hooded, mouth a neutral line in an impassive face.

"Looking good, Mr. Raimi," he said.

"Feeling good, Mr. Dorak," I smiled. "No cuts, no bruises, no broken bones. I must be some kind of superman, the way I can heal, the way I can shrug off a broken neck as easily as a cracked fingernail. I'll have to splash out on some of those insurance premiums I've been hawking-I can suffer the injury, collect the money, heal up quick. I'll make a fortune."

"You may just do that, Mr. Raimi," he said, then added eagerly, "Tell me what you've learned."

"You can't keep a good man down. To get to the top, you have to dig to the bottom. Now means nothing without a then. Shit happens. I'm a killer."

"The three men at the house," he purred. "Nicely handled. How did you feel when you killed them?"

"Happy. It was a relief to get off the mark."

"And now?"

"I feel nothing," I said.

"Very good. There may be hope for you yet."

"Sure," I said sarcastically.

"I detect skepticism in your tone," he said, eyes twinkling.

"I detect ridicule in yours. You're goading me. We both know I've come here to die."

"Do we?"

"I turned against you, betrayed you, beat you up. I'm a dead man. I've accepted that. All I want to hear from you now is the truth. When you're finished, you can wash me from your hair forever. Only spare me the crap. I'm sick of it."

"Mr. Raimi," he sighed, and tapped the arms of his new chair, nowhere near as grand as his last. "So sure of yourself. So stubborn. So wrong. Sit." Warily I took a seat. I noticed he had my puppet on the desk between us. "I'm not going to kill you," he said. "This has all been a test. I wanted to see how you would react when you found your name crossed out, what you would do, where you would go when you had nowhere else to run, how long it would take you to come back. Cruel, hard, horrible tests.

"But you passed." He paused and waited for me to speak. I said nothing. When he saw I wasn't going to respond, he continued. "I know what you're thinking. You want to know what you've won. But isn't it obvious? This." He waved an arm at the office. "Party Central, the city, my empire. I told you I wanted a successor. I said you were in the running. That was a little white lie-you were the only candidate, the only man I'd hand this over to. If you passed the tests. Which youdid."

I massaged my eyelids with my fingertips. He was playing with me still. "I don't want this," I muttered. "I'm sick of the games. Tell me how you got me here and tampered with my brain. Tell me about the other Ayuamarcans, what happened to Adrian and Y Tse, what links us, why you've gone to all this trouble, how you fool people into forgetting us when we're gone. That's all I care about. Save your promises for the next guinea pig."

"You don't believe me," he said. "How peculiar. But I will provide you with answers anyway. Are you comfortable, Mr. Raimi? This is a long, strange tale and I've never told it before. It might take a while. It's an outlandish story but you will believe it because you are part of the proof. But before I begin, tell me where you went when you left this city."

"You know where I went," I snarled. "I told you-no more fucking games."

"But this isn't a game," he said. "You are my heir now, believe it or not, and I will toy with you no longer. I don't have all the answers. There are things which I too wish to learn. So tell me, where did you go?"

"I went to Sonas," I snarled, "the town I lived in when I was Martin Robinson." I told him all about my trip. Dee, my supposed death, the graveyard, the body, the murder. I left nothing out. When I was finished, he sucked the ends of his fingers, one at a time, biting the nails gently, and considered my words.

"How do you account for it?" he asked.

"You snatched me from the morgue and replaced my body."

"Any other theories?"

"I'm a clone. A ghost. His twin. A zombie. This-you, my time in the city-is all a dream. Come on, quit teasing. Are you going to talk or not?"

"What if I told you I've never heard of Sonas or Martin Robinson?"

"I'd know you were as full of shit as ever."

"Nevertheless, I never knew Martin Robinson. You are not that man and never were. That was him in the coffin and everything his widow told you was true. Your theories are flawed. You're as far from the truth as you were before you left. You only came close to the truth when you suggested this might all be a dream."

"I'm not Martin Robinson?"

"No."

"Then who am I?"

"You're Capac Raimi."

"Before that," I hissed.

He shook his head. "There was no before. You're not human, Mr.Raimi. I created you." Then he leaned back and let me gawk at him for a while.

"It started when I was a boy of the streets." He had his chair turned toward the window and was half-facing away from me. He was determined to tell this his own way. I couldn't rush him, so I sat back, bit down on my impatience and listened.

"The city was different then. There was no central criminal force, only dozens of transient gangsters. Every neighborhood could boast its own independent, self-determining gang. They fought and murdered without reason. It was uncivilized chaos."

"I know some people who say otherwise," I told him, thinking of Nathanael Mead.

He waved that away. "Some people would look on the bright side if eagles ripped out their eyes and shat in the sockets. The city was a cesspit. Anyone saying different is a fool or a liar.

"You had to be vicious to survive," he continued. "People didn't respect youth or make allowances for it. Pimps peddled two-year-olds at street corners. Boys were indoctrinated in the ways of the underworld as soon as they could walk. The papers rarely reported it and the police never admitted it, but that's how bad it was.

"My mother was one of the lucky ones. She came from a good family, had a decent job, could have lived in happy denial like the upper classes always do. But she had an Achilles heel. Rather, an Achilles vein. One of those poor people who lose themselves entirely to the temptation of drugs. She lost her job, was disowned by her parents, moved into the east of the city, supported her habit by selling her body. I never knew my father. She didn't either. A client, a pimp or just somebody who fucked her while she was lying in a gutter." I was glad his back was to me. I didn't want to see his face right then.