good today. All I did was make Thokk hesitate.”
“When you’re fighting for you life, sometimes that’s enough,” I said.
“That’s nice of you to say, but I still-” She broke off and frowned. “Matt, are you missing an ear?”
Shrike snapped his fingers. “Almost forgot!” He reached into the pocket of his jeans and brought out a grayish-colored ear. “Found this on the floor, not too far from your gun. Thokk must’ve torn it off you sometime during the fight.”
I brushed my hair back and felt the open dry wound where my right ear had been. “Probably happened when she knocked me down the last time.” I took my ear from Shrike and, without any place better to put it, stuck it in one of my jacket’s handy pockets.
“Won’t you lose it if you don’t get it reattached right away?” Devona asked, concerned.
“Maybe not. An ear isn’t all that complicated, not like an arm. It’ll keep longer.” I had no idea if that was true or not, but I didn’t have time to bother with one ear, not when I had the survival of the rest of my body to worry about.
That reminded me of why we’d come to the Broken Cross in the first place.
“Shrike, did you spot Varma?”
“In all the excitement, I forgot you were looking for him. Yeah, I found him. He was sitting alone at a table in the back, looking like he was higher than Umbriel.” He turned and pointed. “Right over-” Pointed to an empty table. “He was there just a minute ago, I swear to Christ! OW!”
I sighed as Shrike’s mouth sizzled. He’d never learn.
Varma had probably cut out when Thokk attacked. I doubt he recognized me, but he surely recognized Devona. He didn’t have much of a head start on us, though.
“How are you feeling?” I asked Devona.
“Well enough; let’s go.”
I thanked Shrike again, but he was too busy frantically slapping his tongue in an attempt to extinguish the flames. Devona and I headed for the table Varma had until only recently occupied-the one next to the door marked EXIT.
The door opened onto a trash-strewn alley.
“Which way?” Devona asked.
I pointed left. “But there’s no need to hurry. Not anymore.”
Lying face down on the ground not twenty feet away, surrounded by a massive pool of blood, was the body of a redheaded male.
Varma.
TWELVE
I was pretty sure Varma was dead, but I looked to Devona-and her heightened senses-for confirmation. She nodded, her eyes moist with tears. I was surprised; I’d thought there was no love lost between Devona and her “cousin.”
Nekropolis has more than its fair share of scavengers. Stray dogs and cats brought from Earth as pets and then abandoned and left to fend for themselves. The poor animals often end up mutating into bizarre and dangerous forms upon repeated exposure to the strange magics coursing through the city. And there are rats, of courses, far larger and meaner than back home, if nowhere near the size and ferocity of vermen. But there are a number of home-grown varieties as well. Carrion imps are tiny, primitive versions of ghouls that scuttle about in their endless quest to fill their bellies with dead flesh. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been meditating in my bedroom and opened my eyes to find one or more of the little bastards gnawing on me. Leech vine is a vampiric plant that grows on buildings, especially in the Sprawl where no one bothers to kill it. There was some growing on the walls of the alley, but I wasn’t worried about it. Leech vine doesn’t move; it’s only dangerous if you’re foolish enough to brush up against it-and once it has you, if you can’t escape fast enough, it’ll drain you dry just as fast as a flesh vampire.
But one scavenger always gave me pause. It was one of the deadiest of the city’s bottom feeders, and a prime specimen was standing at the edge of the blood pool on four tiny legs, lapping daintily at the gore.
“What is that horrid thing?” Devona cried, and started toward the small creature, intending to scare it away from Varma’s body. I grabbed hold of her arm to keep her back.
“Don’t. That’s a chiranha. It’s alone, but if it calls for its pack, we’re done for.”
She looked at me with disbelief. “You can’t be serious! It’s so tiny!”
The creature under discussion raised its head, glared at us with beady black eyes, and let out a soft, highpitched growl. It resembled a small dog with short tan fur blended with fish scales, and its mouth was filled with rows of razor-sharp triangular teeth.
“Chiranha are either someone’s idea of a sick joke or the result of some very unnatural evolution, but either way, the damned things are dangerous as hell. Believe it or not, they’re a hybrid of chihuahua and piranha fish. They may look harmless at first glance, even adorable in their way, but get them in a pack, and they can strip the flesh from your bones within seconds. I once saw a pack take down a sasquatch-the poor sonofabitch didn’t even have time to scream.”
“Use your gun,” she said. “Fire a bullet in the air to scare it away.”
“The little fuckers are fearless,” I said. “Besides, I doubt he’d even hear the gunshot with all the noise coming from Sybarite Street. I could shoot him, but the one thing guaranteed to bring a pack of chiranha faster than a bark from one of their own is the smell of chiranha blood. They tend not to eat vampire flesh-not unless they’re really hungry, that is. Let’s just wait a minute. With any luck, this one will decide to go seek his dinner elsewhere.”
The chiranha growled at us a few seconds longer, before leaning down to sniff Varma’s blood once more. Then after giving us a parting glare to let us know it wasn’t afraid of us, the chiranha turned and padded off down the alley in the other direction.
“All right. It should be safe to approach now.”
I moved forward to examine Varma’s body, trying not to step in blood, unable to avoid it. He was thin, and shorter than I’d imagined. I realized that somehow I’d expected him to resemble Galm, even though he wasn’t the Darklord’s biological child. He was dressed in the white silken weave of spidermesh, a fashion popular in Nekropolis at the time, and one with partially technological origins-a rebellion against his bloodsire? Or just the latest in a series of trends he’d followed over the centuries? Or maybe he’d just liked the way it felt; Devona had said he was a hedonist.
From the back, there appeared to be no marks on the body to account for so much blood. I put my hands under Varma, intending to roll him over, but my damaged right arm refused to cooperate. I had no choice but to ask Devona to help me.
She did so, fighting tears, but when Varma’s bloodsmeared face was revealed, she lost the battle and sobbed.
His skin was bone-white, dry, and brittle like the castoff husk of a cicada. He stared lifelessly, eyes wide, whites completely red, pupils dilated so much they were practically nonexistent. His skin was white as polished bone. Dry, cracked lips had pulled away from his teeth to reveal sickly gray gum. The inside of his desiccated mouth was caked with blood-soaked clumps of whitish powder. Veinburn.
No sign of a wound on his front, either. I looked more closely.
“He overdosed on veinburn, didn’t he?” Devona asked as she wiped tears from her eyes. “When one of the Bloodborn’s blood supply is contaminated beyond the power of his system to cleanse it, his body casts it out-all of it-and unless he can replenish it within moments, he dies.”
“I didn’t know vampires could die of bloodloss. Interesting.”
She looked at me as if I had just slapped her. When she spoke, I thought she might yell at me, though I had no idea why she would want to. But all she said was, “It’s very rare.”
“Shrike said veinburn was an extremely powerful drug, but I’m not sure Varma did this to himself.”
“What do you mean?”
