“They lost, our boss won, kicked out priests and pantheon, and now we all pretend three thousand years of bloodshed didn’t happen. We put a fence around history and hang a plaque and assume it’s over. Try to forget.”
“What’s put you in such a good mood?”
“It’s been a long day. Long week. Long year.”
“Why did you fold, at the table?”
“I catch hell from the goddess, and I need to explain myself to you, too?”
“The goddess doesn’t know you like I do. She’s reborn every game. I’ve watched you play for eight years, and I’ve never seen you cave like that.”
“The odds were against me.”
“Screw odds. You had to know the lady in black wasn’t suited.”
He turned from the altar. Southwest winds bore the sea scent of salt and death. “Can’t you go stalk some girl fresh from university or something? Leave me in peace?”
“I’m reformed. I am no longer a dirty old woman.”
“Could have fooled me.”
“Seriously, Caleb. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he said, and patted his pockets for a smoke. Of course nothing. He quit years ago. Bad for his health, the doctors said. “The odds were against me. I wanted to get out with my soul intact.”
“You wouldn’t have done that four years ago.”
“A lot changes in four years.” Four years ago, he was a fledgling risk manager at Red King Consolidated, recovering from a university career of cards and higher math. Four years ago, he was dating Leah. Four years ago, Teo still believed she was interested in boys. Four years ago, he’d thought the city had a future.
“Yes.” A tiny copper coin lay at Teo’s feet, a bit of someone’s soul spooled up inside. She kicked the coin, and it tinged across the roof. “Question is, whether the change is for the better.”
“I’m tired, Teo.”
“Of course you’re tired. It’s midnight, and we’re not twenty-two anymore. Now get down there, apologize to that table, and steal their souls.”
He smiled, and shook his head, and collapsed, screaming.
Images burrowed into his brain: blood smeared over concrete, a tangled road into deep mountains, the chemical stench of a poisoned lake. Teeth gleamed in moonlight and tore his flesh.
Caleb woke to find himself splayed on the sandstone floor. Teo bent over him, brow furrowed, one hand cool against his forehead. “Are you okay?”
“Office call. Give me a second.”
She recognized the symptoms. If necromancy was an art, and alchemy a science, then direct memory transfer was surgery with a blunt instrument: painful and unsubtle, dangerous as it was effective. “What does the boss want with you at midnight?”
“I have to go.”
“Hells with her. Until nine tomorrow, the world is someone else’s responsibility.”
He accepted her hand and pulled himself upright. “There’s a problem at Bright Mirror.”
“What kind of problem?”
“The kind with teeth.”
Teo closed her mouth, stepped back, and waited.
When he could trust his feet, he staggered toward the stairs. She caught up with him at the stairwell.
“I’m coming with you.”
“Stay here. Have fun. One of us should.”
“You need someone to look after you. And I wasn’t having fun anyway.”
He was too tired to argue as she followed him down.
2
Moonlight shone off the streak of blood on the concrete path beside Bright Mirror Reservoir.
Caleb watched the blood, and waited.
The first Wardens on site had treated the guard’s death as a homicide. They scoured the scene, dusted for fingerprints, took notes, and asked about motive and opportunity, weapons and enemies—all the wrong questions.
When they found the monsters, they began to ask the right ones. Then they called for help.
Help, in this case, meant Red King Consolidated, and, specifically, Caleb.
Dresediel Lex had been built between desert and sea by settlers who neither expected nor imagined their dry land would one day support seventeen million people. Down the centuries, as the city grew, its gods used blessed rains to fill the gaps between water demand and supply. After the God Wars were won (or lost, depending on who you asked), RKC took over for the fallen pantheon. Some of its employees laid pipe, some built dams, some worked at Bay Station maintaining the torturous Craft that stripped salt from ocean water.
Some, like Caleb, solved problems.
Caleb was the highest-ranking employee on site so far. He had expected senior management to swoop in and take charge of a case like this, with death and property damage and workplace safety at issue, but his superiors seemed intent to leave Bright Mirror to him. At the inevitable inquest, he would be the one called to testify before Deathless Kings and their pitiless ministers.
The RKC brass had given him a wonderful opportunity to fail.
He wanted a drink, but could not afford to take one.
For a frenzied half hour, he’d ordered junior analysts and technicians through the routines of incident response. Isolate the reservoir from the city mains. Pull some Craftsmen out of bed to build a shield over the water. Find a few tons of rowan wood, stat. Check the dam’s wards. Cordon off the access road. No one comes in or out.
Orders given, he stood, silent, by the blood and the water.
Glyphs necklaced Bright Mirror Reservoir in blue light. The dammed river ran glossy black from shore to shore. He smelled cement, space, the broad flatness of still water, and above all that a sharp ammonia stench.
Two hours ago, a security guard named Halhuatl had walked along the reservoir, casting about in the dark with a bull’s-eye lantern. Hearing a splash, he stepped forward. He saw nothing—no night bird, no bat, no swimming coyote or bathing snake. He scanned the water with his lantern. Where the light touched, it left a rippling trail.
That’s strange, Hal must have thought, before he died.
A chill wind blew over the water, producing no waves. Caleb stuck his hands deep into the pockets of his overcoat. Footsteps approached.
“I grabbed this from the icebox in the maintenance shack,” Teo said, behind him. “The foreman will miss his lunch tomorrow.”
He turned from the water and reached for the parcel she held, white wax paper tied with twine. “Thank you.”
She didn’t let go. “Why do you need this?”
“To show you what’s at stake.”
“Funny.” She released the package. He undid the twine with his gloved hands, and opened the paper. A frost-dusted slab of beef lay within, its juice the same color as the blood on the concrete.
He judged the distance to the water, lifted the beef, and threw it overhand.
The meat arced toward the reservoir. Beneath, water bulged and reared—a wriggling, viscous column rippled with reflected stars.
The water opened its mouth. Thousands of long, curved fangs, stiletto-sharp, snapped shut upon the beef, piercing, slicing, grinding as they chewed.
