Transitional Arrangements Page 2

  “Professional—” I nearly choked to death—so to speak—laughing at him. Jesi was looking at me in alarm. Of course he hadn’t heard the arsehole’s words. “Well, while we’re being so damn honest here, Parido, let’s just say I trust you about as far as I could toss this building, and whatever this plan is of yours, you can bet me and Jes will scrutinise it until the pips squeak before we agree. So you can take your professional courtesy and give yourself a rectal exam with it. Get down here and tell us what the fuck is going on.”

  Parido didn’t move. “I’m not crouching in the dirt.”

  “Oh for fu–” I stood up. “For an assassin, you’re a prissy little bitch, aren’t you?”

  “The difference between you and me, Langse, has always been that I have standards.” He glanced at Jesi. “In everything.”

  I gave him my oiliest smile. “And the difference between me and you, Parido, is that I don’t go by looks. You’d buy an auto for the paint job.” I laid my hand on Jesi’s head. “I prefer those with big...engines, performance and most of all...stamina.”

  “Spare me the sordid details of your pathetic love life, Langse,” he said, eyes narrowed in annoyance. “Can we move on? I don’t have all night.”

  “Why, got a hot date?”

  “Nev, what’s going on?” Jesi stood up and peered in the space where he imagined Parido to be—which wasn’t where the tosser was standing. I turned him slightly, then grabbed Parido by the arm. Jesi blinked. “Oh, there he is. Almost forgot what an ugly sod he was.”

  “You know, we used to refer to your Elite Security Force as Every Simple Fool and you two are walking demonstrations of the truth of that, “ Parido snapped.

  I smiled, knowing we’d got to him, and turned to Jesi. “Be nice to him, babe—after all, he doesn’t look as good as I do dead, and he never will.”

  “I’ve no ambitions to look like a rentboy, fortunately. Can we get on?”

  There was more than annoyance to this, I realised, and we’d played with him long enough. For now. “Yeah. Now—what’s this about oblivion?”

  Chapter 2 — Transitional Arrangements

  It was whackier than the whackiest cheap novel I’d ever picked up in an airport to kill time with, and that was saying something. Jesi sat and listened like he’d taken one too many boots to the head, and even I, who had a lot more reason to give credence to the yarn, was still wondering if this was some kind of near-death delusion. Maybe none of it was real at all—maybe I was in a hospital bed, with Jesi grieving at my side, dreaming all of it. It felt real, but every druggie I’d ever arrested as a cop had insisted the purple lizards crawling up their legs were real too.

  It all required a lot more faith than I was used to giving anyone but Jesi and our team—and certainly not to Parido and the rest of the Marauders. I’d spent the last six years trying to systematically destroy them and all they stood for. It sat badly with me to just have to keep still and listen to that scornful snooty voice, but I did my best. Time to kick him in the head later, if he was jerking us around.

  He said there was a group of bad hats called the Exalted, a name which had me rolling my eyes from the get go. “Yes, I share your feelings, Langse, much as I hate to admit it. But much as I hate to admit it also, they make the Marauders look like a kindergarten class.”

  “You mean they’re not?”

  “Oh do shut up,” he said irritably. I thought it was fascinating how easy it was right now to puncture his cool—something I could use, maybe. I shut up anyway. “The Marauders work for hire, and for most of us, the ultimate aim is not to work at all—a goal, I might add, we are very close to achieving, despite all the frantic activity from the ESF.”

  “You might want to redefine ‘we’ in that sentence,” I couldn’t help pointing out.

  He gave me the slightest sneer, the barest curl of his barely visible lips. “It’s not like your retirement plan’s going to be needed either.”

  “You two, drop it,” Jesi said, much to my surprise. “Explain about the Exalted, Parido. How many are there, what do they want and what are they up to.”

  He almost seemed pleased that Jesi was keeping us on track. “The Exalted came to our attention ten years ago when we lost several key people to their activities. They’re all paranormals, and we established that their aim is global domination, which always struck me as entirely too much effort for the payoff. We redefined our core business to avoid coming into conflict with them since there was no practical reason for us to cross them, but we’ve been tracking them. Since I....” He coughed delicately. “Passed over—”

  “Died,” I amended bluntly.

  “Died,” he agreed in a flat voice, giving me a sour look, “I’ve learned more about their ambitions, since our mutual condition, Langse, allows us to travel anywhere at will. There are a number of spirits who are as concerned over the Exalted as I am.”

  I held up my hand. “Wait a minute—how come I can’t see these other spirits, and how come I was lost for more than a week, and then you found me?”

  “Not relevant at this point,” he said, and when I opened my mouth again, he just talked over the top of me. “I’ve learned that the Exalted, of which there are twelve, are planning to breach the barrier between the spirit world and this one. Their aim is to gain enormous paranormal power—more power than any individual paranormal could ever conceive of possessing. The actual result of what they’re planning will be to destroy both worlds, because no one, no matter how powerful or trained, could contain the flow of billions of spirits across the breach, and the spirits, apart from those like you, Langse, simply cannot survive in this world without a bodily host.”

  “You do.”

  “Actually, no. I’m not ‘here’, but your presence in the physical world allows the barrier to be thinned enough so that I appear to Gonlimi much as you do. I’m still behind the barrier. Which brings me to the way the Exalted are planning to create this breach. Bridges are the rarest talent among paranormals—they’re one in a thousand, in a group which is itself rare. We estimated there were probably no more than twenty in existence in the entire world.”

  I grinned at Jesi, who was looking strained. “Told you I was special, babe.” He smiled faintly back, and I ignored the gagging noises from the clown across from us.

  “Unusual, perhaps—certainly not extraordinary,” Parido couldn’t resist chipping in. “They plan to bring together a number of factors which contribute to the thinning of the barrier, at a time and place when the two worlds are especially close, and use Bridges to rend the barrier in the hope they can channel the power of the spirit world into the twelve of them.”

  “What factors?” Jesi asked. “And what time and place?”

  “Specifically, dying people. People close to death are already in transition between the two worlds. A portal to the spirit world becomes ready to open to admit them, though of course, it doesn’t open until they actually die. Bring a large group of them together, and you have a large number of such portals, which are potential and exploitable points of weakness.”

  “So, it’s going to happen in a hospital? Or a hospice?” Jesi said.

  Parido looked pleased, as if his dog had learned a trick. “Ordinarily, yes, but the place is also important. There are locations in this world at which the barrier is naturally thinner—you, Langse, may have noticed that your talent is particularly troublesome in some places more than other?”

  I nodded reluctantly. “It’s spooky. You saying that haunted houses are real?”

  “No, mostly they’re just people’s undereducated and overactive imaginations giving them a cheap thrill. But some temples, some ancient monuments—some isolated natural reserves—were built where they were because of this barrier thinning.”

  I threw up my hands. “How do you know this? Are there spirits hanging around just waiting for a master criminal to turn up so they can teach them?”

  “Well now, for you, that almost sounds intelligent.” Jesi scowle
d at him for that. “Not all the spirits move between lives. Some reside permanently in the spirit world, and some of them have precognition—so yes, they were waiting for me, and my own talent confirmed what I was told. I haven’t spent a month just sitting on my hands.”

  “Can’t see you getting any arse action otherwise,” I sniped, and got a more genuine grin out of Jesi, which was what I’d been hoping for.

  “Neither of us will be getting much ‘arse action’ for the foreseeable future. Do you want to hear the rest of this or do you simply want to amuse your lover?” Parido folded his arms and looked as pissed as I’d ever seen him.

  “Continue,” Jesi said calmly. He seemed to be accepting this for now, but the presence of his gun on the ground a few metres from us still bothered me. If he decided this was all bullshit, then there wasn’t a hell of a lot I could do to stop him carrying out his plan. And where was our team? Why weren’t Luiziuj or Wevi around to keep an eye on him? How much imagination did it take to realise this was a dangerous time for Jesi? If I could kick arse right now, I’d find my so-called friends and boot them from here to the other side of the moons.

  “The place they’ve chosen is by a lake in north Esidkin—they’ve been planning this for some time, as there is a congruence of planetary and temporal forces which further weakens the barrier. It occurs approximately every three hundred and fifty years—the spirits have been anticipating this event with some anxiety as it’s always a dangerous time for them. The Exalted see it merely as an opportunity.”

  “Planning?” I said. “Doing what?”

  “They need to attract large numbers of dying people—so what do you think they’re doing?”

  Jesi, smarter, faster, better educated, and in every way a finer man than me, got it at once. “A shrine? Mystical healing powers? The shrine of Kar-det-wei?”

  “Well done,” Parido said, beaming. This time it was me making gagging noises. “Yes, that’s the shrine—completely fake, but then they all are. The only difference is that this one hasn’t been set up to fleece the vulnerable but to encourage them to congregate in the one place, ready for this congruence. A congruence which will take place at dawn six days from now. The Exalted plan to place themselves in an artificially induced near-death state, and the four Bridges they have gathered together will carry out a ceremony and rip the barrier at that precise moment and place. And after that...no human will exist, except as mindless animals, incapable of thought, emotion or any higher mental power. The race will die, and the spirits will be dispersed and destroyed. Inadequate as your current existence is, you can imagine how much worse it could be,” he said, soberly and without a trace of mockery or sarcasm. He was deeply worried, and that scared me.

  Jesi was quiet for a few moments, then he asked, “So how can I stop it?”

  “You can’t. But that’s not why I got Langse involved. I need you to contact my people, and they can stop it. The ESF are incompetent to deal with paranormal matters—or much else.” The sneer was back.

  Jesi bridled, but I beat him to the punch. “Well that ain’t happening,” I growled, the orphanage boy in me coming out no matter how much polish Jesi had tried to give me. “Jes, we gotta tell Dipnil.”

  “Yes, that would work,” Parido said dryly. “ ‘Oh commander, commander, my dead boyfriend says that a bunch of people we think don’t exist, are going to channel ghosts in a week’s time and we’ve just got to stop them.’ Then Dipnil locks you up in a madhouse, and in six days’ time, the world as we know it comes to an end. That would be one of your better ideas, would it, Langse?”

  I pulled a face at his tone. “I’ll tell him myself.”

  “How? He can’t see you—only your soul bond with Gonlimi allows him to see you.”

  I clenched my fists in frustration. “Then how can we convince your team?” Jesi asked, always better mannered and in control than me. Me, if I’d had a body right then and could have got my hands around Parido’s flesh and blood neck, I’d have ripped his head clean off. Jesi would have restrained himself, though he could have done it. He was big enough. I’d have paid money to see it too.

  “My lieutenant, Tinun Ajui—”

  “No fucking way!” I bellowed.

  “Is a telepath,” Parido continued, as if I hadn’t opened my mouth. “He can—”

  Jesi raised his hand. “There are no such things as telepaths.”

  “Or ghosts,” Parido said, smirking. “I guess you’re just crazy after all, Gonlimi.”

  “Can it,” I said, glaring at him. “Jesi, telepath or not, you’re not going near Ajui. The man’s a psycho, and this is just a trap to get you killed.”

  “He’s not a psycho,” Parido interjected. “But yes, he will try to kill you because that’s what he’s trained to do, which is why you need my help.”

  “Bullshit,” I said, getting to my feet. “Enough’s enough, Parido. I’ve listened to your fairytale and your insults, but I’m not letting you get Jesi killed. You want to talk to your pet maniac, you go talk to him yourself. I’m not getting involved.”

  “If I wanted Gonlimi dead, Langse, why did I help you stop him killing himself?”

  “To fuck with our heads, when did you ever need a better reason than that?”

  Parido sighed. “Gonlimi, talk some sense into him, will you? Preferably soon because we don’t have much time.”

  He took his hand off my arm, and stood up. Jesi blinked, presumably because sarcastic-and-ugly just disappeared. But I could still see him. “Name someone else. Anyone but Ajui.”

  “No.”

  “Is he the only telepath in the Marauders?”

  “He’s the only one I’d be able to convince,” Parido said flatly. “This is non-negotiable.”

  “I need to talk to Jesi. You need to fuck off out of my face for a bit.”

  “Your wish,” he said with a deeply sarcastic bow, then winked out of sight. I didn’t believe he wasn’t listening but at least I didn’t have to look at him for a while.

  Jesi got to his feet. He looked a lot more tired than he had ten minutes ago, and the need to put my arms around him was an ache in my chest worse than being shot. “When I wake up, will this be all a dream?”

  “Dunno, babe—I’ve been asking myself the same thing. But you can’t go anywhere near Ajui. The man’s fucking insane, and he’ll kill you. Even Parido says he’ll try to kill you.”

  “Which begs the question—why hand me to Ajui when he could have, as he said, just let me blow my head off?”

  I winced, the image sickening. “Maybe so Ajui can torture you and make you give the rest of the team up before he kills you.”

  Jesi really must have been tired, because that was clearly something he’d not thought of. “Point,” he agreed. “Is there any way you can verify any of this?”

  “Maybe, but even if it’s true, it doesn’t mean he actually wants to save the world, or that he doesn’t have another agenda. They never play it straight. I don’t think they know how.”

  “True.” He rubbed his face, swayed a little. “You should have let me do it, you know. Then we’d be together.”

  “He says not. Could be a lie—it wasn’t something I was gonna risk.”

  He stared down at me, bleak misery in his eyes. “If Ajui kills me, then I guess Parido and I both get what we want.”

  “No! I won’t let you!”

  He raised his hands as if he was going to put them on my shoulders, then clenched his fists in frustration. “At this point, I know enough that I can tell Ajui what’s going on. If he’s really a telepath, he can tell if I’m lying, and he presumably already knows as much about our people as I could tell him. He’ll have to work out the details of a plan for himself. But it’s better than doing nothing. Better than living...like this.”

  “Then go to Dipnil! He’d listen, I know he would....” Jesi just gave me a look. “Okay, maybe not. What about Luiz?”

  “Luiz...I don’t think so. She’s not coping with you being dead and
we...kind of...she didn’t come to the funeral.”

  I stared. Luiziuj Fresiz was my best and oldest friend next to Jesi—his best friend too—and it was unheard of for any officer not to attend a funeral of a colleague. “What happened?”

  “Nothing that matters now,” he said, dismissing it with a wave of his hand. “Nev, I’m going to find Ajui. Now I can do it on my own, or with your help and Parido’s. Better to go out on a mission, than like....” He nodded over towards his discarded gun. “Yes?”

  “No,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “Your choice.” He began to walk towards his weapon, and all the jumping up and down and yelling I was doing, made no bloody difference at all. He bent and picked up the gun and clip, shoved the gun into his shoulder holster and the clip into his belt pack, then looked at me. “If you change your mind, I guess you know where I’ll be.”

  “Jesi! Please, love, don’t do this! It’s suicide!”

  “Yeah. But I won’t have to pull the trigger, and that means no broken soul bond. Catch you on the flip side, I guess.”

  He walked over to the service stairs, and I could only watch, yearning, worrying, angry and sad and desperate. But then I nearly jumped out my skin as I heard Parido’s horrible voice near my ear. “Messed that up properly, didn’t you, Langse?” He grabbed my arm, then called to Jesi. “Gonlimi, unless you want this to be yet another pointlessly dramatic gesture, do you at least want a few small tips on how not to get your head blown off those bulked up shoulders?”

  I tried to get his hand off me, but he was pitiless, and since it wasn’t actually muscle I was using, he could make his strength equal to anything I could muster. “Jesi, ignore him!”

  But my lover had already turned, though he looked wary. “Start by telling me how to find him.”

  “No, I’ll start by telling you that there’s no way you can take him. So you have to do what I would do.”