Four on the Floor, Part Fourteen - Steemit Exclusive Urban Fantasy
Part Fourteen
The world returns to rest, but I’d swear I heard a rumble off in the distance, miles upon miles away, out of my sight or perception, but it gives me the creeping feeling that something took notice.
“…the what?” I’ve got a brow perked, head tilted, vocal pitch sliding up on the end of the question. I even blink a few times for good measure. “Seriously, what? Are we going to get back to me investigating a murder at any time soon? Because that’s what I promised to do, so… I’d like to do that, okay?”
His sister is kneeling. Actually kneeling. Facing me.
Val is just standing there, looking around like someone just stole his wallet. “Wh-what happened? Leni? Leni, why are you kneeling? What’s going on?” I now have his undivided attention, whether I want it or not. “What did you make me do?”
“What? I didn’t make you do anything! You were introducing me to your sister and then you called me a shadow dancer. I don’t even know what the Hell you were talking about. What the fuck is a shadow dancer?”
“You.” She still can’t look up to meet my eyes.
“That doesn’t answer my question. And stand up, please? I know we’re in the middle of nowhere and no one will see but this is embarrassing.”
She does get up, but she still won’t look me in the eyes.
“Anybody? Anyone going to tell me what a shadow dancer is and why you think I’m one?” Val just stands there, but his face implies he’s trying to remember how exactly he came to those words. His sister, Leni, I guess, just keeps standing there like she’s standing before a god. “Nobody? Okay. Guess I’m walking.” And that’s exactly what I do. I may be out in the middle of the Benedict, but GPS doesn’t care about urban blight. Home is a few dozen blocks in a west-ish direction. Pumpkin would likely be a better partner on this, if only because all the deference is getting on my nerves.
“Wait!” Val is jogging after me, because I haven’t been walking that long. “Just wait, I need your help, okay? Do you have any idea the shit you just dropped in my lap?” He winces, like he’s been slapped. “I apologize for raising my voice, My La- A.J. You told me to call you A.J.”
“I don’t care if you raise your voice, but this shit has gotten a little too weird. I told you I wanted to investigate a murder, and now your sister’s treating me like I’m God.” I pull out my phone. Fuck, no bars.
“Because you are, at least to us, to the Fae, the weres, the vamps, the dragons, all of the mythics. You’re Keth, a sorcerer.”
“Necromancer, if we’re tossing fantasy terms around.” I turn away, resume my walk.
“Call yourself whatever you want, but to all of us? You’re the Shadow Dancer. We just… know to call you that, just like we all just know to call the language Sigil. It’s how you made us, so we’d always know the name of our masters and the language of our king.”
I scoff, quite impressively actually. Shame I’m wasting it on him. “I’m nobody’s master, and no one’s king or queen.” I roll my shoulders, and resume walking. “Follow if you want, I’m going to investigate a murder.” Might as well go back to the beginning. Maybe Les or someone else might have seen something, or have an idea. It’s a stretch, but I have to start somewhere since asking around only got me a Fae and a title.
“You’re looking into a murder? Why didn’t you just, you know, call the police?” He’s following, and picks up his pace to come up beside me, fumbling to secure the sword to the belt loop of his jeans. ‘This is going to be awkward as Hell.”
“Then just ditch it, if you want. And the woman was killed out here, in the Benedict, and left alone for at least a week. No one found her, no one living anyway, until I got there.”
“Ditch it?” Val half-chuckles, incredulous. “I couldn’t even if I wanted. This was a noble’s sword, this thing is Faesteel, that’s steel without any iron in it! This thing was forged by a Dwarf-“
“Oh, God, there’s dwarves, too?” The worst thing is that I know this should all be freaking me out, but subconsciously, I know all of this is true. After all, I’m working magic, seeing spirits, and working with the dead. Once you hit that point everything starts seeming believable, like imagining Siouxsie Sue and Robert Smith doing a non-ironic collaborative album of love ballads. It’d never happen, obviously, but the world’s so far gone from normal you might as well put down a pre-order. So instead I’m just exhausted as more of my world is chipped away and replaced with the weird. “Wait, we’re not supposed to call them dwarves, right? Don’t they prefer little people? Or people of short stature?”
“No, I mean actual Dwarves. Beards, blacksmithing, Lord of the Rings kinda stuff? They made this sword, I can’t just get rid of it. Besides, you bequeathed it to me. This doesn’t belong only to me anymore, it belongs to me, my family, any family bloodline I produce, by decree of the Shadow Dancer.” He stops, and grimaces. “I interrupted you, you were talking about the woman you found?”
“I thought it was going to be a routine exorcism. I go in, I release the spirit, and it tells me what it wants. Usually, it’s just doing what you said, calling the police so they’ll be found, get some peace, or report where I found the body anonymously so it can be recovered and given a proper burial. Sometimes it’s a ghost that’s having trouble moving on. This time… She was stabbed, and something was keeping her soul inside her body. When you die, the pain of death is supposed to stop. It didn’t with her and she became a poltergeist.”
Val, despite being Fae, appears to never have heard of this sort of thing. I don’t blame him. Living people don’t like thinking about death often because it only reminds them that it’ll happen to them someday.
“Anyway, she almost killed me, so I promised to find the man who killed her. She didn’t remember his name, so I’ve got no leads, so we’re going over examine the scene.” I start walking again. Since I’m already in the Benedict it’s not too far of a walk. “Hopefully the body’s been taken care of.”
“Wait, it might still be there?”
An hour later, mostly be using cross streets as a guide, we’re there to get an answer to that question.
The answer, unfortunately, is yes.
“Fuck, that asshole didn’t even bother to get her a proper burial.” I’m first in the room, of course, and quickly smear some menthol gel under my nose. I offer some to Val, who’s looking green. We’re around the time that the zombies are up and about, but oddly, there were any around. I expected at least Les to hang around, as it might take a while for him to remember that I’ve already been there, but the alleys are clear.
Val imitates my gesture but still fights off nausea, and loses in the hallway.
I squat down next to the body, rot starting to settle in, scavengers and carrion animals only just beginning to take samples. I’m grateful she’s moved on to another place, it makes this easier to look at.
I slip in my earbuds, start a new track, and try to take in the room now that I have the time to really examine it as a murder site. I don’t touch anything, because I’m not stupid, and eventually the police will come to investigate if I have to call them myself and I’d rather not be a suspect. The music helps, gets my mindset back to a more normal place.
I’ll smirk at the fact that this feels normal, later.
The circle I drew is mostly gone, but that happens when I break the circles, so it’s not worth filing. I check my phone, about a bar, enough to get the GPS and check the direction. Not one of the four compass points, but I still pin the location to the map for later. I take a couple of pictures as well, being careful while Val’s still puking out in the hallway. I kneel down next to the body, nudge carefully with my boot, making sure I don’t touch any bloody parts.
The room shudders, literally, and I feel a pressure in the back of my skull. So, of course, like any idiot in a slasher movie, I nudge the body again, a little harder. Dust falls from the ceiling, Val calls out from the hallway about an earthquake.
The pressure builds to pain, blinding, white-hot, screaming, screeching pain. Everything’s going white, heat builds in my fingertips, like lit fuses sparking and sizzling up my body. It’s death, it’s the pain of death as your body shuts down and your brain either refuses to accept it, or it’s already kicked off.
This is death. Pain. Her pain. This is what she felt. I can feel the sharp punch in my chest again and again with so much hatred. Die die die die die die die die die die die die-
“Fuck off! Fuck off! Fuck off!” My eyes are shut. But the more I say it, it fades into the background. I haven’t felt this way since I found my magic and lashed out blindly at a poltergeist and put him in a Halloween decoration. I’m moving, I can feel anger and fire surrounding me and I need to put them out, or make them my own. I recall a memory of being on the floor, dancing, some asshole moving in on me, and I wove my way about him, slipping through the crowd in the dark like a breeze, dancing like…
Like a...
“I am the Shadow Dancer, and this stops. Now.”
My throat is raw. Was I screaming? My tongue hurts, as well. How am I saying those words in Sigil?
The pain’s stopped, though, thank God, and when I open my eyes, the body has been nudged over… a foot. I hadn’t moved, really. What the Hell’s going on?
“A.J.?!”
I blink, take out my earbuds while Rise Against surges on until I tap my phone. “Yeah, yeah. Sorry.”
“You were just standing there, and…” Val’s in the room now, and he’s staring at the body.
“It’s a dead body. Don’t touch anything, as this is a crime scene, unless you have disposable gloves.” I kneel down next to the body, again, head still pounding, but the pain is retreating into the background. It looks like there’s something written on the floor, under her chest. The floor’s stained heavily, but there are definite characters written. Wavering characters, actually, moving like they’re alive, writhing.
“This is the murder victim?” His voice is small, fearful. “You don’t know who did it?”
“No, but I’m going to find out and-“ I look up at him. “You all right?”
“She’s twin-blooded. One of ours.” His breathing is stressed, and she looks perfectly human to me.
When I turn my attention back to the characters, they still writhe, pushing out of the wood, wriggling masses of maggots and pulsing, rotting flesh.
But there’s magic here. I can feel it, and characters like that don’t just appear. Someone had to put them there.
Someone with magic, working with death.
Another necromancer.