What follows is a chapter from the first book of the trilogy. Had I
been kind enough to actually write the whole bloody thing in semi-
readable form and then post it for you, you'd know that at this point,
Dusty Morgan has come to Seattle hunting a serial killer and fallen
past an event horizon. She's met aliens, been told that Earth is under
attack in a shadow war that is most certainly not shadowy elsewhere in
the Universe, and is now struggling with the fact that the serial
killer she's after can create holes in space and time and thus is going
to be damned hard to lock up.
Crap.
You also would have met Jusadan, the only soraan to
survive childhood in thousands of years, and thus
has the honor of being the Restorer, who is one of
the two people essential to the Universe's survival.
You might expect him to be arrogant, but you would
have discovered that he is a very nice chap indeed,
who blushes easily where Dusty is concerned.
And you would know that a soraan is a very powerful
being indeed.
In this scene, we are introduced to Chretien Pratt, who is fated to
speak the eulogy for the world. And he in turn is introduced to Dusty,
who becomes for him the epitome of Death. Later, he will explain this
meeting to Ray in these terms: "I know pale horses when I see them."
There are many things I love about Chretien: his outspokenness, his
iconoclasm, his atheism, his language. We get to see a little bit of
all of him in this scene. He's a complex person, someone easy to
dismiss if taken at face value. If you never get past his
(deliberately) offensive exterior, you never will get to see the epic
poet within, the Celtic warrior, the bard. And he is a bard in the
best sense of the bardic tradition: he can destroy you with the truth,
revealed in a few cleverly turned phrases. Or simply unleashed on you
with all the poetry of a shotgun blast. Depends on his mood.
There are many things I love about Dusty, not the least her tendency to
strip away a person's masks, lay their soul bare, and then go on as if
doing so is the most ordinary thing in the world. In these moments, for
me (and hopefully for the reader), she becomes more than a mere
profiler and becomes something of an oracle, a seer, and then in the
next instant takes my breath away by shrugging it off and just being
human.
Combine these two people, and you eventually get something greater than
the sum of its parts. If I'm very lucky, you get a glimpse of that
alchemy here.
- The trees in the park dripped with mist. Chretien Pratt shook back the sodden mass of his
longish brown hair and gazed up at clouds lit by sodium vapor streetlights, barely visible between the
spreading branches. He felt completely lucid, as if he had just come back from a near-death
experience. The rain had washed the air to such a pristine state that every sound, scent, and sight
had a brilliant clarity. Nothing but Mother Nature and the parallel city and the policeman squelching
toward him through wet grass filled the expansive comedown from a fairly successful stint on acid.
- A halogen flashlight tracked like a strobe. An hour ago, he would have tripped an abduction scenario.
The patrolman stopped and stared down at him, an imposing figure with his waffle-soled shoes and weightroom
physique. Chretien sat with his arms wrapped around his knees, black duster shedding the worst of the drizzle, and
watched the man loom. He was a fair loomer, at least a five-point-six on the Olympic scale. “Were you aware the park’s
closed?”
“Damn. That didn't say a.m.? The tail must have worn off the p on the sign.”
It was hard to distinguish features in the halogen glare centered on his face, but he thought he saw the cop’s lip twitch
in irritation. “Could I see some ID, please?”
“Tell me what law I’m violating and I might let you peek,” Chretien drawled.
“Your ID, please.”
“Nosy fuck, aren’t you?” Chretien waited long enough for the cop to shift forward, ready to grab him, and hauled out
his wallet. “You have the right to see this, and I have the right to tell you to fuck off afterward. We both understand the
law, don’t we, Gestapo Dan?”
The cop scrutinized his driver’s license as if it were the Rosetta Stone, calling in the information over the radio clipped
to his shoulder. He seemed disappointed when the check came back clean. “Mr. Pratt, the park is closed. You need to
leave.”
“I’m not doing anything illegal. I’m sitting in a public park. That’s what they’re for.” Chretien held out his hand.
“So let’s have my license back, and you go chase a speeder. Run fast.”
The cop handed over the license. “I’ll run you in for loitering if you don’t leave now.”
“Don’t pop your aneurysm.” Chretien made a production of replacing his license, heaved himself up, and brushed his
coat off thoroughly before he sauntered away. Lucky for him the duster hid the bastard sword strapped to his back. The
warded blade let him claim it was a fake, but even then it raised pesky questions in the minds of Seattle’s finest.
Chretien briefly considered heading for one of the larger, less patrolled parks, but too many of his friends had died in
them and he didn’t want to deal with the dead tonight. He headed for the Theatre instead. It was almost closing time, and
Ashton might want a go with the blades. A practice room on Athesea looked a fuck of a lot better than home right now.
The coffee house was nearly deserted. Chretien passed one mightily stoned gent nodding over a book of poetry and
threw himself against the counter. Jusadan looked up from the tome he was hunched over and smiled his welcome.
Chretien tipped him a salute and leaned past the biscotti jars. “Hey, Ash. How are ya, bitch?”
Ashton’s head popped over the espresso machine. In the next instant, a towel flew his way. Chretien caught it and
soaked up the puddles he’d left. “Mind-boggled. You?”
“Fucking bored.” Chretien scrubbed at his hair. “You two up for some bladework?”
Jusadan gestured to the book and the papers scattered around it, filled with his graceful but jumbled script. “I would,
except I have to finish this.”
“I gotta get home. Promised August.” Ashton scrutinized him. “You high?”
“Not anymore.”
Ashton shook his head, reaching inside the machine. “You shouldn’t do that shit, Chret. Believe me, it’s not good.”
“Yeah, neither is red meat. So fuck it.” Chretien jerked a thumb at the bonzo in the corner. “I don’t get like that
loser. You’d like me stoned. I’m very fucking deep.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you are.” Ashton grimaced, arm buried to the shoulder. “Christ, this thing’s a bastard. Go shoo
Stoner out, K?”
Chretien dropped the towel in a heap and pushed back from the counter. “On my way, K.”
Bonzo looked up from his book as Chretien halted beside the table. He watched his stare travel from his face to the ankh
around his neck, down to the Misfits skull leering from his t-shirt and his unlaced Doc Martens.
“Closing time, sir.”
“Sorry, man. Sorry.”
Chretien smiled. The bonzo swallowed hard and scrambled up. “Thank you. Have a nice
evening, sir.”
“Chret, don’t be intimidating my customers,” Ashton called out as he locked the door behind
the fleeing man.
“Hey, that fucker needed intimidating.” Chretien collected dishes from the vacated table.
“You don’t want shit like him around here.”
“He’s harmless, and he pays. That’s all I ask.”
“Aw, I’ll bet you say that to all the johns.” Chretien fetched his towel and wiped down the
table, put the chairs up and swept the floor. He liked the after-hours quiet, the whisk of the
bristles against tile, Jusadan’s presence and Ashton’s mumbled imprecations as he fought with the
espresso machine. He’d built a new life around such things. He’d fought for them, watched
others die for them, would die himself if it came to that and consider it worth the price. It beat
the shit out of selling his ass on the streets.
Jusadan’s quiet voice reached him as he dumped the dust pan. “Has she been back?”
“Haven’t seen her, no. Why?”
“Curiosity.” Chretien heard old binding creak. Papers rustled as Jusadan cleared up his work. “Tell Ray I want to be
the one to take her to Athesea when the time comes.”
Chretien whipped around. Good thing he’d emptied the dustpan. “Who the fuck are you talking about? We got a
new member?”
Ashton shrugged. “Not really. It’s a little warped. She’s a profiler. Ray’s giving her information on Thompkins so
she can hunt him down, and Shannon’s trying to fix her up with Jusadan.”
Not warped. Convulsed. Chretien stalked over to the counter and fixed Ashton with a hard stare. “Try this from the
start, small words. Name?”
“Dusty Morgan.”
“Shit.” He’d seen her on America’s Most Wanted a few times and been glad her scalpel gaze hadn’t been turned his
way. “Is Ray out of his fucking mind?”
“Don’t know. Haven’t talked to him.” Ashton polished the glass display case under the counter thoughtfully. “She
seems okay.”
“My ass. She’s dangerous. Ray doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing, letting her inside.” Chretien turned his stare
on Jusadan. “And what’s up with you wanting to take her traveling?”
Jusadan curled his fingers around the cover of his book. “Ray would only show her the war. She needs more than
that. I met her; I think I understand her well enough to keep her first experience offworld from overwhelming her.”
He was holding something back. Chretien could see it in his face, and the faint flush that crept into his cheeks what it
was. He leaned forward until their noses almost touched. “You’re not fireproof, you stupid fuck. Be careful where you
stick your hands.”
Jusadan’s eyes sparkled. “I will.”
Chretien slapped a hand down on his head. Jusadan laughed and ducked out from under him, sweeping his pile from
the counter. “I should go. Thank you for the refuge, Ashton.” He clapped Chretien on the shoulder and vanished into a
gate.
“Kervaa’s mad at him,” Ashton confided. “He missed practice this afternoon.”
“Shit, he should have gone to ground in Sri Lanka.” Chretien put the dust pan away. “You done?”
“Close enough.” Ashton came out from behind the counter with the cash drawer. “Call me tomorrow. We’ll set
something up.”
“K.” Chretien saluted laconically and wandered out.
He had no intention of visiting the Nile, but he ended up there anyway. Something about the place always drew him
like a lemming to cliffs. He’d watch the pretenders profess their love for Death while they clung to life, maybe come away
with enough inspiration for another scathing harangue from the pen of Damien Aganostes. A few drinks, fuck with the neo-
Goths, cap off the evening with... something. Anything was better than this disconnected aimless wandering through the
streets of a city that had long since lost its charm.
The exotic keen of Sisters of Mercy ushered him into the reek of pheromones, sweat, and alcohol. Chretien picked his
way through erotically entwined bodies dripping black and trudged toward the lounge area at the back. Why did he keep
coming here when all he got was alcohol poisoning and gothic pop? It had been different when Robbie spun underground
bands, when Jade fronted Disciples of Set, when they’d been there giving meaning to empty lives and the movement was
still exclusive. Now Goth was in, Jade out, and Robbie dead. Masochism. That was the reason. Pure fucking masochism.
Chretien stopped.
Her clothes said she didn’t belong here. They were too establishment, despite their somber hue. No one sat in a
maroon velvet booth in slacks, an ankle-booted foot up on the seat and a shoulder holster peeking from beneath a designer
blazer. No one came in here with their natural hair color. It just didn’t happen.
But it wasn’t the out-of-place things that stopped him. It was a face that fit too well, that showed all the pretenders for
what they were. Her pale, almost sharp features framed in a spill of dark hair, her intense dark eyes focused on the leather-
bound book she read, they fit. They knew Death intimately. Everything these people reached impotently for, she held in
hand. She sat there, the embodiment of everything gothic without the velvet clothing or dyed hair or garnet lipstick.
Chretien didn’t want to face Death tonight. He started to turn.
She looked up.
Her eyes stuck him like a dart to a board. He quivered under their impact, pinned in place. He barely noticed one of
the dancers slam into his back. They were ghosts, insubstantial as smoke. She was the only reality. Her eyes thrust past
his defenses and excised every secret he’d ever kept, read every desire and fear, squeezed out every bit of pain and
longing, then rolled them up neatly and tucked them back.
She nodded, just the slightest incline of her chin. Chretien’s feet finally came unstuck, but he didn’t head for the
door. He approached her table and dropped into the empty seat facing her. “You shouldn’t be reading that shit,” he said
with a valliant attempt at nonchalance. “You’re in a goth club, you should be reading Aganostes.”
“I have read Aganostes.” She placed the book face-down on the table. “You’re Chretien Pratt?”
He sat motionless for a moment, taken aback on two fronts.
“Ray’s described you.” She had a slight, wry smile, no humor at all softening the wolf inside. “Dusty Morgan.”
She didn’t offer a hand; neither did he. The dim lighting and context had tricked him, but he recognized her as soon as she
stated her name. “You’re the agent.”
She nodded slightly.
Dropped yourself into the shit-pile again, Pratt. For once in his life, he could think of nothing to say.
She seemed to sense it. “You a fan of Aganostes?”
Chretien managed to laugh. “You could say. I am Aganostes.”
She appeared in no way surprised by that revelation, just nodded as if she had known. “I’d be glad to buy such an
illustrious pen name a drink, if he has his fake ID with him.”
Chretien flushed for the first time in recent memory. “They’ll kick you out of the Bureau if they find out you’re
contributing to the delinquency of a minor.”
- “They won’t kick me out.” Her voice held a trace of bitterness under biting humor. She signaled a
waitress, who took Chretien’s drink order without asking for proof of his age. “How did you come up
with the name?”
Chretien fished his cigarettes from his duster. “It’s two things. An age in agony, and an agnostic.
Damien’s from an old Savatage song. I was sixteen.”
He shook out a cigarette and lit it, then passed her one. Her face changed when she tilted her head
down to the flame and her sable hair cascaded forward. Eyes down, illuminated against a shadowed
background, she looked like a Madonna, Our Lady of Sorrows. She reminded him of Jade, mythical, the
avatar of a dark god. No wonder Jusadan was so taken with her, if he’d seen her this way.
- She leaned back and blew a cloud of smoke that drifted up like incense from censors. “You never wrote like a sixteen
year old.”
Chretien finally snapped the lighter closed. “Yeah, I did. When I was twelve.”
She grinned, a shadow of laconic humor that didn’t soften her. “You’re the most misanthropic child prodigy I’ve ever
come across.”
Chretien shrugged. “Anger and disillusionment to work through.” He gave her a closer look as the waitress left his
drink at his elbow. “Doubt I’ll ever get done.”
“We seldom do. Once you take the glasses off, they’re hard to put on again.”
“If it’s even remotely fucking possible.” Chretien sipped his drink. Her gaze drifted to the dancers and gave him
enough distance to consider what it meant to have someone like her privy to the Breagha Faire’s secrets. Time to pry.
“So what do you do for the FBI?”
“I intimidate.” She gave him a lazy smile without turning her head from the dance floor. “I’m a profiler.”
“You profile me? From my books, I mean?”
She nodded.
“Well?”
“White male, mid-to-late-twenties.” She gave him another sidewise look. “Age is always the hardest thing to pin
down.” She inhaled a lungful of smoke. “Your father or another male relative abused you physically, probably sexually.
Your mother didn’t do a thing to stop it. She’d never wanted you, and you had no great love for her. You left home as
soon as you could, even though you were well below the age of majority. You dropped out of school and educated
yourself. You don’t care what other people think of you as long as they know you’re smart. You allow yourself to be
stereotyped so you can break the mold. You’re a thrill-seeker who taunts the law, a self-proclaimed anarchist who’s dying
for some sense of order in a world that’s out of control. You question authority because you feel it’s the only good you’ll
ever do.” She looked directly at him. “You’re proud of what you’ve done with your life, but you’re not satisfied. There’s
something else, something you don’t expect to find or aren’t sure you’ll succeed at, but you’ll never stop trying.”
He was holding a lit cigarette and wanted another. “Jesus.” He downed half his drink and realized his hands were
trembling. She had hit far too close to home. “Fucking Christ.”
“I respect you more than almost any other author I’ve read,” she said, taking a sip of her own drink.
“Okay.” Chretien shifted, uncomfortable with her praise. “So who do you respect more?”
“Neil Gaiman.”
Chretien grinned. “Thanks for not putting some fucker like Dickens ahead of me.”
“No problem.”
They sat in silence for several moments. She watched the pretenders writhe to counterfeit pain. He watched her, and
came to his own conclusions. They disturbed him. “You know these people are fake, don’t you?”
She looked at him, her dark eyes understanding more than words and emotions. “They used to be real.”
“It’s like they lost something. They don’t know they’ve lost it. But we know.”
“Yes. We do know.”
Chretien sat through another moment of uneasy silence, uneasy for him. She seemed part of the silence, relaxed,
tracking the dancers with eyes that saw everything. “I’m leaving,” he said finally. “You want to go for a walk or
something? I mean...” He hesitated. “I’d really like to talk to you.”
“We’ll talk.” She dropped a Franklin on the table, slipped into her trench coat, and snaked the book off the table. She
handled it as if it might burst into flames.
“What is that?” he asked as they left.
“Diary of a Serial Killer. Gerald Allen Thompkins.” She passed it over. “I’m sure Aganostes would find it
fascinating.”
Chretien read a random passage that left his skin crawling. He closed it, handed it back, and resisted the urge to wash
his hands in the puddle he had just stepped over. “You got any idea what this shit means?”
“No.”
“He’s twisted some of the founding concepts of the Breagha Faire to fit his own fucked-up reality.”
Chretien’s hands still wanted washing. He buried them deep in his pockets. “That’s dangerous shit.”
“How is it dangerous?” A simple question, impossible to answer.
They turned down another street, and people surrounded them, but they didn’t feel real. Discussing
this was always like a lucid dream, and the masses around them still slept. Some of them would never
wake up. “You don’t play with those powers, and you don’t fuck with the rules. Not even me.”
Dusty smiled. This time, there was a touch of genuine humor behind it, cruel-edged and hard. Nine
parts rage and one part despair, a Sleeper waking from one nightmare into another. “And you never
question those rules?”
“Fuck yes, I question them.” Chretien nodded to the journal in her hand. “That’s why I haven’t
broken them.” He had no idea how he was going to explain this, or why. He plunged. “You met
Jusadan. Thought he was a nice guy, right? Salt of the fucking earth.”
Her eyes veiled, and he got a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach as he realized what that meant.
She nodded slightly.
“How powerful do you think he is?”
“I don’t know enough to judge.”
Chretien stopped. People parted around them; they were stones in a stream, now, and that was also power. He
wondered if she understood that. She would have to, to understand this. “Let me tell you something about him, because
he won’t tell you himself. Jusadan’s got the kind of power you read about and dream about and hope to God you never
possess. Man’s a fucking demigod.” He gestured to the lights, the people, buildings and cars and strays. “He could wipe
this city out in a heartbeat. He could face Sha’daal, and I’m not saying he would win, but I seriously fucking doubt he’d
lose. That’s the kind of power he wields, that’s inside him.” He drew in a deep breath as he let his hand fall. “Took me
three years before I found that out, and I’ll tell you something. I’ve never been that fucking scared in my life.”
She laughed softly, a sound like an angel weeping. His groin tightened in response, but he tried to ignore it. No way
he was even going to think about her like that. “Thing about Jusadan is, he understands the rules. He plays by the rules.
He doesn’t fuck around, he’s in control of his power and he’s got a good idea of what his place and purpose are, and that’s
why he and the rest of us are still around. If Jusadan wasn’t a nice fucker, we’d all be fertilizer.”
Dusty gave him the sort of look that told him she wasn’t buying the whole load. Chretien sighed, running his hand
through his hair, and tried again. “Look, if he ever changes sides, we’ll have to invent a new word for holocaust. K? I
want you to understand that, if you’re going to get to know him better. He’s not someone to fuck around with.”
“I doubt I’ll see him again.”
Oh, shit, another fucking martyr. That sentence had run all the way from I wish I could see him right now to I hope
I’ll never see him again, and he knew why. People like her thought they were too dark for things like friendship and
love. Chretien stared her down with his best you’re-the-biggest-fucking-idiot-on-the-planet stare. “That would be a shitty
thing to do to him, you know.”
She didn’t look away, but the slightest miasma of guilt crossed her face. Good. “You were going to tell me why what
Thompkins is doing is dangerous.”
Yeah, you just fucking try to redirect the conversation. “I am telling you. You fuck with this kind of power, even
te’i’ahne, it comes back at you hard. Sha’daal figures out you’re corruptible, you get sucked in way the fuck over your
head. And Sha’daal’s the kind of being that’ll turn you into pet food once he’s done with you.”
Dusty grinned. “Sounds pleasant.”
“You really don’t have the first fucking clue what Sha’daal is, do you? ’Course not; you’ve been talking to Ray.”
That got a real laugh out of her. “He showed me the pictures you took.”
“Pictures,” Chretien scoffed. He decided against telling her just how much alcohol it had taken to drown the fear after
photographing Sha’daal. “For fuck’s sake. And I’ll bet he hasn’t told you word one about what it really means.” He
stepped closer to her and dropped his voice. “Look, I can show you. If you’ve got the balls for it, I can show you what’s
out there, and maybe that’ll change your mind about a lot of things. Maybe it’s something you need to know.”
She hesitated. He knew it wasn’t fear, because a woman like her didn’t fear anything but herself. She was weighing
his offer against her need to hunt down Thompkins, but what she didn’t know was that the hunt would fail if she didn’t
have all the information. “I’ll tell you what. You let me show you a few things, and I’ll go through that journal with you.
I can tell you things Ray never will, things that might give you that edge you’re looking for.”
It was like being a politician. You found the right hook, you had them no matter how much they wanted to resist.
“All right. Show me.”
Famous last fucking words. “Follow me, Alice. Let’s go fuck with the rabbits.”
 | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  |
