After taking a few deep breaths, I managed to get myself together again. Freaking out wouldn’t solve anything. My eyes hurt like hell, but I managed to find my nifty sunglasses without stepping on them, so hey, things were already looking up. Dmitri was a problem, and that was a fact, but there wasn’t much I could do about that right now. I didn’t have any of the toys I would need to find him with me, and for the moment, at least, he seemed more interested in apologizing to me than killing me.

The shadow was still feeding me the layout of the street, so I could feel my purse lying on the street under another parked car. I fished it out, blinking as my eyes ran with tears. I rummaged around, looking for my cell phone, only to remember that I’d left it in my jacket pocket. Glory was in the purse, though, and she pinched my fingers playfully while I was searching.

I pulled her out, and set her down on the roof of the Russian’s SUV. She crawled around a bit, probably not liking how cold the metal was at the moment. Technically, Glory’s an artifact. Not one of mine, since sadly I’m just not that good. She’s a Hand of Glory, and they’re a stone bitch to make. She showed up on the doorstep a few years ago, and since she didn’t eat much and didn’t take up much room, Gene kindly let me keep her. A thousand and one uses, depending on which source material you want to believe. Traditionally, a Hand of Glory is made by severing the hand of a man hanged for murder. Glory, though, is definitely a woman’s hand. Tonight she was sporting a black lace fingerless glove and a set of press-on nails with a coat of slut-red nail polish. Her version of lingerie, I guess. She’d followed me into the bedroom when I was getting dressed for my date tonight, and she wanted to get prettied up, too. Her flesh is dried and leathery, not much to be done about that, though I have tried a few moisturizing creams. They don’t seem to do much, but she seems to enjoy having them rubbed on. Her wrist ends in a slightly ragged stump, in which a few gold and copper wires can be seen. I’d love to take her apart and see what makes her tick, so to speak, but I’ve kind of grown attached to her.

I fished out my cell phone and my lighter. With the first, I pressed the speed dial button for Gianna. Then I tapped Glory’s knuckles until she sat up on the roof of the car, balanced on her wrist stump and with all of her fingers pointed up. While I listened to Gianna’s phone ringing, I lit the fingers one by one. Not the thumb, though. When her fingers are lit up, candle-style, she makes a sort of invisibility effect. Or maybe she just makes folks ignore her and whatever she’s hiding… I suppose it doesn’t matter which. It works, and that’s what counts. Light the thumb, too, and she emits a sweet-smelling aroma that makes folks go right to sleep – except for whoever’s holding her. That had been embarrassing until I figured it out. Glory’s not very talkative, and she didn’t think to bring an owner’s manual with her. I’d brought her along in case the date hadn’t gone all that well. Glory makes climbing out a bathroom window totally unnecessary. Of course, I’d brought the wormbomb and the flamethrower for similar reasons. A girl can’t be too careful these days.

There are some scary people out there, after all.

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Benny’s car continued to make unsettling noises as I drove. I was following the tug, the sensation of the part of my shadow that I’d attached to the shooter’s vehicle. While I did that, the rest of the shadow uncoiled and stretched. She sent tendrils and ribbons of darkness flowing out, all over the car. She liked to explore new places, and whenever it was safe, I let her. It made it easier to control her when it wasn’t safe.

The shadow could see through my eyes, of course. We were so close, so tightly bound that the boundary between us had blurred over the years. But when she explored like this, it was a very tactile thing. I could feel the takeout wrappers and empty coffee cups in the backseat. I could feel her oozing into the trunk, where she explored the tread of the spare tire, and the musty cardboard boxes full of papers. There was a gym bag there, too, under Benny’s cooling body. It was full of sweaty clothes and masculine toiletries. As usual, she fed me the sensations of what she discovered. She supplied feel of it, the shape, the smell and taste of her discoveries, along with some alien sensory input that I never could really integrate. I supplied the names, the concepts that gave some kind of sense to what she discovered. And she didn’t discriminate. She tasted the stale donut in the trash in the backseat, and the droplets of dried coffee in the takeout cups there. She explored Benny’s body well enough that I knew he was going commando under his tailored suit and that he’d been sweaty when he died. The sweat tasted of quiet anxiety, not fear, which was interesting. The blood tasted perfectly normal, and she was curious about the transformation that was going on in him. Then again, she was also enjoying a little game in the undercarriage of the Lexus. She had encountered a spider on the undercarriage, and gleefully pursued it as it fled her touch until it finally leaped free of the moving car. At the same time, she was in the engine, savoring the vibrations and noise and exploring the damage done by the drive-by. The wind was making whistling noises through the bullet holes and small parts of her were dancing to the music of it. Also, she was attached to a bronze SUV a few miles away, clinging tight and singing a silent beacon to me. And she was in my head, whispering commentary on the whole shebang. Sometimes I thought of her as a them, or an it, but none of those words quite fit. She was Other. She was from Outside.

I took in all that input, and managed to drive the car and fiddle with the radio. Living with the shadows does wonders for one’s ability to multitask. I finally turned off the radio. There was too much on my mind, it was only making it harder to think. In the back of my mind, whispering murmuring continued, but I was used to that.

I couldn’t quite remember how I’d become an Outlander, a human being with an alien entity in the hole where my soul should have been. That part of my life was a dim, hazy blur, and everything before that was a complete blank. I do remember wading out of the surf in Texas as a young teenager, naked and screaming and clawing at my hair, while in my head a shadowy thing screamed, horrified at the meat prison it found itself in.  I’m not sure whether I summoned it, or whether I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Good times.

Since then the shadow and I have established a working relationship. It can’t survive in this world without a shelter. My body provides one. And I can’t survive without a soul, the essential spark that makes us all live. She helps with that. Together, we make a pretty good team.  Still, it involves certain… concessions… that are always hard to explain.  My ex husband Gene never did quite come to terms with it.

Back in the old days, when there was a lot less magic in the world, calling up an outsider was one of the few paths to power for a magician.  Usually the goal was to summon it up and tap it for power.  Some outsiders, from really far Outside, can’t survive in our world.  They’re too alien.  Most of those just die.  Some of them, though, can try to possess a local being - humans work best; don’t ask me why, but they do.  When that happens, things get interesting.

Most often, the outsider destroys the host, mind and soul, and uses the body as a sort of terrestrial spacesuit.  A protective buffer between itself and the environment it finds itself in.  We call those Hollowmen, for obvious reasons, and they’re always bad news.  Powerful and alien, they destabilize the world around them just by being there.   And often, they seek to breed, multiply, and expand their territory.

Less often, the host is too strong, willful, or canny to be taken over.  A kind of symbiosis results, a careful cooperation is negotiated.  An amalgam results, something with the knowledge and power of an outsider, with the mind and ability of the human host.  An Outlander.

Like me.

Hmmm. The SUV was still moving. My sense of where it was purely directional, with a hazy impression of distance. I took a few turns at random, trying to get an idea of where to go.  East?  Northeast.

My stomach rumbled, and the shadow chimed in with a darker hunger.

It seemed she was always hungry.  The shadow was cold, too, and my sense of my own hunger had dwindled with my ability to feel cold.  But I could always feel her hunger.  When I was working, I’d sometimes go for days without eating anything.  It’s helped me keep my slender figure, I guess. That, or the shadow feeds on me while I’m preoccupied.

I pulled through a drive-thru, and let the Deputy Mayor buy me dinner. Why does food always taste better when you pay for it with money you lifted off a corpse?

I parked the car in a dark corner of a lot across the road. While the shadow flitted about, exploring the area and keeping on the watch for anyone approaching me - and anyone who might provide a meal for her - I thought about Irish.

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As corpses go, this one wasn’t so bad. I’d seen worse. I’d made worse. I’d once stumbled into a den for a pack of rabid werewolves. The corpses I’d seen there, and the corpses I’d left there, had been the stuff of nightmares. Or so I’m told. My own nightmares tend along different lines.

I strolled around the body, my high heels clacking dully on the dusty tiles. By comparison, this was junior league material. The body was a man, middle fifties, full head of iron grey hair, with a seamed, jowly face. His vacant hazel eyes were staring up into the cobwebs on the ceiling. We were inside an abandoned 7-11. The windows were soaped and boarded over, and the racks were all gone, or smashed. The coolers were still there along one wall, but the doors were missing. Most of the clutter and debris that usually shows up in places like this had been swept over to one side, blocking the front entrance. It made room for the pentagram on the floor, with its stubby black candles and corpse front and center. I tilted my head. No, make that bottom and center. It was meant to be drawn upside down, of course. Same wannabe Satanic claptrap that you always find around Halloween. That kind of thing always aggravated me. Amateurs have no business farting around with the occult. Somebody ought to run an ad campaign. Friends Don’t Let Friends Invoke? Don’t Conjure Under the Influence of Dumb?

Not snappy enough. Probably never happen.

He was wearing a pinstriped business shirt and dark slacks – I’d found a matching jacket on the dusty cash register. There was a wedding band on his finger offset by a chunky red ruby on a truly tasteless pinky ring. There was a gold watch, one of those ridiculously overpriced and gaudy jobs that really wealthy people pretend to like. I fished his wallet out of the jacket, removing a few hundred dollars and ignoring the rest. No need to check the ID, it was hard not to recognize him. Deputy Mayor Devon Brant was in the news a lot lately. There had been some scandal recently about alleged connections to organized crime. The press had loved that. I could hardly wait until they started in on this. Devon Brant, Killed in Satanic Ritual, with an editorial about how there are too many abandoned convenience stores in the city, and the taxpayers should have them all knocked down so Devil-worshipping cultists would have no place to kill city officials.

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After taking a few deep breaths, I managed to get myself together again. Freaking out wouldn’t solve anything. My eyes hurt like hell, but I managed to find my nifty sunglasses without stepping on them, so hey, things were already looking up. The alleged Dmitri was a problem, and that was a fact, but there wasn’t much I could do about that right now.

Come to think about it, even if he knew my whole name, not just the first bit, “Alice,” that may or not do him much good. I’d been living with my shadowy partner for so long, that we’d more or less become one. One person? One entity? Even I didn’t know its true name, and without it, I doubted that Dmitri could do much to bind me.

The shadow was still feeding me the layout of the street, so I could feel my purse lying on the street under another parked car. I fished it out, blinking as my vision began to return. Normally I’m a big fan of taking the problem to the troublemakers, but since I had no clue how to track down Dmitri just now, I’d settle the issues already in front of me. I rummaged around, looking for my cell phone, only to remember that I’d left it in my jacket pocket. Glory was in there, though, and she pinched my fingers playfully while I was searching.

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Benny’s car continued to make unsettling noises as I drove. I was following the tug, the sensation of the part of my shadow that I’d attached to the shooter’s vehicle. While I did that, the rest of the shadow uncoiled and stretched. She sent tendrils and ribbons of darkness flowing out, all over the car. She liked to explore new places, and whenever it was safe, I let her. It made it easier to control her when it wasn’t safe.

The shadow could see through my eyes, of course. We were so close, so tightly bound that the boundary between us had blurred over the years. But when she explored like this, it was a very tactile thing. I could feel the takeout wrappers and empty coffee cups in the backseat. I could feel her oozing into the trunk, where she explored the tread of the spare tire, and the musty cardboard boxes full of papers. There was a gym bag there, too, under Benny’s cooling body. It was full of sweaty clothes and masculine toiletries. As usual, she fed me the sensations of what she discovered. She supplied feel of it, the shape, the smell and taste of her discoveries, along with some alien sensory input that I never could really integrate. I supplied the names, the concepts that gave some kind of sense to what she discovered. And she didn’t discriminate. She tasted the stale donut in the trash in the backseat, and the droplets of dried coffee in the takeout cups there. She explored Benny’s body well enough that I knew he was going commando under his tailored suit and that he’d been sweaty when he died. The sweat tasted of quiet anxiety, not fear, which was interesting. The blood tasted perfectly normal, and she was curious about the transformation that was going on in him. Then again, she was also enjoying a little game in the undercarriage of the Lexus. She had encountered a spider on the undercarriage, and gleefully pursued it as it fled her touch until it finally leaped free of the moving car. At the same time, she was in the engine, savoring the vibrations and noise and exploring the damage done by the drive-by. The wind was making whistling noises through the bullet holes and small parts of her were dancing to the music of it. Also, she was attached to a bronze SUV a few miles away, clinging tight and singing a silent beacon to me. And she was in my head, whispering commentary on the whole shebang. Sometimes I thought of her as a them, or an it, but none of those words quite fit. She was Other. She was from Outside.

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“Who’s this one, now?” Irish asked me as we headed back down to the first floor. We’d taken a look at the stairs to the third floor, and found them blocked off with most of the fourth floor.

“Pardell.” I glanced over. Irish had a flashlight now. He seemed pretty damn sure the building was empty.

“Right. And who’s he?” He glanced at me as we hit the first floor. “Or what is he?”

“He’s a who.” I paused, found a cigarette, lit up. One thing we hadn’t found was Dmitri’s workspace. I couldn’t imagine it was up those stairs, unless there was some hidden way to the third or fourth floor we hadn’t spotted. I was betting on a basement. Irish hadn’t come in the front door, so that meant either he climbed in one of the many broken windows, or there was a back entry somewhere. Maybe a back entry with stairs down to a basement. “You find a basement coming in?”

“Aye. Back that way.” He gestured down the hall with the flashlight beam. “The door was locked, though, an I heard yeh goin up the stairs, so I didn’t bother with it.”

Right. He must’ve let me have the first apartment, and gone past to find the mess in the last one. Wait. Heard me going up the stairs? I’d been cloaked in darkness going up the stairs. He couldn’t have heard me. I turned to ask him about it.

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As corpses go, this one wasn’t so bad. I’d seen worse. I’d made worse. I’d once stumbled into a den for a pack of rabid werewolves. The corpses I’d seen there, and the corpses I’d left there, had been the stuff of nightmares. Or so I’m told. My own nightmares tend along different lines.

I strolled around the body, my high heels clicking dully on the dusty tiles. By comparison, this was junior league material. The body was a man, middle fifties, full head of iron grey hair, with a seamed, jowly face. His vacant hazel eyes were staring up into the cobwebs on the ceiling. We were inside an abandoned 7-11. The windows were soaped and boarded over, and the racks were all gone, or smashed. The coolers were still there along one wall, but the doors were missing. Most of the clutter and debris that usually shows up in places like this had been swept over to one side, blocking the front entrance. It made room for the pentagram on the floor, with its stubby black candles and corpse front and center. I tilted my head. No, make that bottom and center. It was meant to be drawn upside down, of course. Same wannabe Satanic claptrap that you always find around Halloween. That kind of thing always aggravated me. Amateurs have no business farting around with the occult. Somebody ought to run an ad campaign. Friends Don’t Let Friends Invoke? Don’t Conjure Under the Influence of Dumb?

Not snappy enough. Probably never happen.

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“Who’s this one, now?” Irish asked me as we headed back down to the first floor. We’d taken a look at the stairs to the third floor, and found them blocked off with most of the fourth floor.
     “Pardell.” I glanced over. Irish had a flashlight now. He seemed pretty damn sure the building was empty.
     “Right. And who’s he?” He glanced at me as we hit the first floor. “Or what is he?”
     “He’s a who.” I paused, found a cigarette, lit up. One thing we hadn’t found was Dmitri’s workspace. I couldn’t imagine it was up those stairs, unless there was some hidden way to the third or fourth floor we hadn’t spotted. I was betting on a basement. Irish hadn’t come in the front door, so that meant either he climbed in one of the many broken windows, or there was a back entry somewhere. Maybe a back entry with stairs down to a basement. “You find a basement coming in?”
     “Aye. Back that way.” He gestured down the hall with the flashlight beam. “The door was locked, though, an I heard yeh goin up the stairs, so I didn’t bother with it.”
     Right. He must’ve let me have the first apartment, and gone past to find the mess in the last one. Wait. Heard me going up the stairs? I’d been cloaked in darkness going up the stairs. He couldn’t have heard me. I turned to ask him about it.
     “Pardell, yeh said?”
     I looked at him, and he met my eyes, and for just a moment, it was a wordless acknowledgment on both our parts. We both knew we were hiding something, we just didn’t know what, yet. I wasn’t entirely sure I cared for that.
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“What’s this fuckin noise?” He demanded, waving at the radio.
     I glanced at it, then at him, horrified. “You don’t know?”
     “Never heard such garbage.”
     “It’s Black Sabbath! War Pigs, man!” I turned it up. “Jesus, they let you into America not knowing this shit? Are you here legally?” He gave me the Look. It was the one that said I was not amusing, and I should just stop trying. I grinned.
     I was jack-assing around a bit to take my mind off my worries. Something my blonde assailant had said was preying on my mind, and it turned out Irish was a crappy conversationalist, so I couldn’t get it out of my head. Blondie had told Gianna, “You have two hours.”
     Two hours.
     What time was it? What time had it been when he’d called? I didn’t have a clock on me because my phone was gone. That bothered me too, because he’d told Gianna they had me. I had no way to let her know I was free, and we’d screwed around long enough without me wasting time trying to find a pay phone so I could check in. Did she know me well enough to trust that I’d escape? Was she thinking clearly enough to let me play my hand?
     Irish didn’t have a watch, either. I’d already asked.
     Two hours until what? They blew the city up with a nuclear bomb under Tiger Stadium? They released the hounds? They started killing the kids? Probably. I kept my eye on the pendulum tied to my rear view mirror while my nerves danced. Navigating by pendulum was great when you were water-witching out in the boondocks, but in the middle of Detroit, looking for a black magi’s den of inequity? Made for some harrowing left turns from the far right lane, let me tell you. Good thing I drive like I have a death wish, anyway. I was used to this. Irish, on the other hand, had a look in his eyes like he was entirely too sober to enjoy my driving.
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I avoid fights. I don’t like them. They’re never conveniently located – there’s always witnesses. I’m almost always in over my head, and stuck with someone around who shouldn’t see me whip out some abyssal power to even the odds. I prefer the quiet stalk, like a tiger, a quick chase, bring the prey down in a place of my choosing, dispense with them neat and easy, and nobody needs to catch me doing it.
     So, really, down the dark alley next to a bar gearing up for happy hour, twenty feet or so from a busy sidewalk and a busier street? With an Orderman for back-up, even this one? Not my first choice for a big gunfight with a bunch of Russian mobsters and an unknown mage. I knew the mage was out there, too, because as Irish shoved my assailant into the dark, I felt the roll of their power, lifting the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck, dancing on my tongue like the metallic ozone flavor that fills the air just after a lightning strike.
     I eyed the mouth of the alley, gun aimed in that general direction, then glanced back at Irish. “This could get messy.” I said, thinking that a bunch of professional killers and a mage with any training whatsoever wouldn’t possibly be dumb enough to charge the mouth of an alley. It was a perfect bottle neck. I mean, I sure the hell wouldn’t do business that way, unless I was damn certain I had me out-gunned.
     I turned just in time to catch a quick burst of motion from Blondie, an escape attempt – he twisted and spun, hooking his arm under Irish’s, meaning to throw the bigger man, I think, only he never made it. I blinked, and missed half the action, and Irish had the guy’s arm twisted straight out behind his back, hand between Blondie’s shoulder blades. Irish pushed, there was the sharp, solid snap of breaking bone, and all the fight went out of Blondie with a wheeze of pain. Irish caught him by the back of the head and bounced his skull off the wall. The man slumped to the ground like a sack of rags.
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