To Beat the Devil (The Technomancer Novels Book 1) Read online

  “Have I ever told you that you are an exceptional conversationalist?” I said.

  “My point, smartass, is that by simple numerical count there should be 607 inside. Yet I hear 608 distinct heartbeats, 608 separate voices. Which means someone walked right past my sight and I picked up nothing.”

  “I thought you were Heimdall on the rainbow bridge. Are you losing your touch?”

  “Heh,” Jensen chuckled. “Dramatic. But, yeah, I’m sure. This means someone walked past me, got inside, deactivated whatever cloak he had, and ordered a drink. Smug prick like that has got to be your man.”

  “Well, Ricky did say he was a mysterious figure who was capable of many things.” My own observations also picked up 608 heartbeats. And two were exceptionally calm. One was Ricky’s. Nothing raised that man’s pulse.

  “Speaking of Ricky, is he in?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Yeah, in his office as always. He told me to ask you to see him prior to your meeting. Maz is already here, perched at the bar. Your bidding I assume?”

  “Well, we all don’t have panoramic vision, bud. And I need as many eyes as I can to watch my back.”

  “You always have mine, bud. Until then, you should consider some implants. Latest tech doesn’t shorten lifespans nearly as much,” Jensen said.

  I felt bad for the cyborg. Implants give humans heightened senses, strength, and generally whatever one needs to be superhuman. Downside? An incredibly shortened lifespan. Forced evolution, even through the most modern science, brings with it a terrible price. Jensen seemed to be a late 20s fella. And in a few years too soon, he would have to pay the check.

  We shook hands again and I headed inside.

  ********

  Dante’s is like the Star Wars cantina. Treacherous hive, scum, villainy. Damn, it is a fun place. The music was blasting a retro mash-up of Rob Zombie and Johnny Cash. You have to hear it to believe it. The multi-tiered industrial wood, brass, duracrete, and seizure lights were an affront to all things symmetrical and rational. Left-brained be damned. Succubae and Incubi servers flaunted flesh and peddled amazingly potent drinks. It was the perfect place to have anonymity among a sea of faces.

  I made my way through the mass of dancing, drinking people and monsters and caught eyes with the Spinoli sisters, Theresa and Caitlin. Fraternal twin sisters of Irish and Italian descent with tempers to match. Both gorgeous, both deadly. They ran the alcohol provisions of Dante’s with an iron fist. I mean an actual iron fist. Both sisters had one of their arms replaced with top-of-the-line ARCTech biomechanical limbs. No Frankenstein, Roddenberry’s Borg, back-alley chop shop erector-set-looking implants. These gleamed like Giger originals. Superhuman strength and enough firepower to level a city block. Leave it to the Irish and Italians to take care of the booze business. They partnered with Ricky some years back and the credits have been flowing in since. No one dared skim, or fall short of a bar tab. Speaking of, mine was almost due. I sidled up to the bar and the noise canceling dampeners kicked in along the bar rail, making it possible to actually have a conversation. I love living in the frickin’ future.

  “Ladies, you are a vision tonight,” I said, doing my best to not stare at the black liquid latex tops they were wearing.

  “Salem.” Theresa smiled at me. “Ricky wants to see you before your meeting. Drink first?”

  “Sure. Whiskey sour, please,” I said as I lit up another smoke.

  Caitlin already had the drink ready. She handed it to me and stared me dead in the eyes.

  “Theresa, why is your little sister looking at me like she is about to put two in the chest and one in the head?” I asked as I sipped my drink and nodded my approval.

  “It could be because you are so rugged and handsome with just the right amount of stubble,” Theresa purred.

  “Or it could be you are due on your enormous tab, asshole,” Caitlin said loudly. She was the one who would rip your leg off and beat you with it. Theresa was the one who would poison your drink. Great gals, really.

  “All right, all right,” I said, holding my hands up in mock defense. “I was hoping for a little leniency considering all I have smuggled and procured for you two, as well as your boss. But from the look in your eye and the way Caitlin wants to both kiss and shoot me, I am guessing that is a no go?” I winked at Caitlin and she licked her lips while giving me both middle fingers. Heh. Tread lightly there, my friend, I told myself.

  Theresa shook her head while pouring a drink for other customers. “Salem, we love you to death, but look at it from our end. If we were to make an example of you, one of our nearest and dearest friends, then none of these reprobates would cross us. Hell, they may pay extra.”

  What was it with my “friends” using me as an example tonight? But hell, she had a point. I guess humanity left a long time ago, replaced by the cutthroat nature of mankind after He left us all those years ago.

  I pulled out my Bio-Electric Accounting System Transfer (or “BEAST” for short) account drive, which then verified my DNA. The Spinolis scanned it, and I clicked “accept.” Done. Back to business as usual. I never keep that much in actual credit coins on me, and my tab was due. I finished my drink while chatting up the Spinoli sisters. When the gab fest was over, I snubbed out my cigarette and headed toward Ricky’s office. Moving away from the bar’s sound dampener, I felt a rush of noise crash back in. I pushed my way through a few rowdy hellions, a full demon or two, and countless humans and cyborgs dancing. The room was dense with sexual desire and booze lubricant to ensure disgusting inter-species perversions. To each their own. I wasn’t against inter-species sex. I was just mad because I wasn’t getting any at the moment.

  Usually in a place like this, the manager’s office is at the top floor. Not Dante’s. Ricky would have you walk the several tiers to the top level to take an elevator to the basement to his office. Two huge ARCTech-enhanced bouncers stood by the elevator door and looked as unimpressed by me as I was by them. They had a few visible mods along the muscle line. Strong Jockeys.

  “Move, boys. I got business with Ricky.”

  “Mr. Rictus,” one of the goons corrected, “will see you when he is ready.”

  “You Salem?” one of them asked me. I nodded. The goon shot a glance at his buddy and inclined his chin at me. Fuck. These two were sizing me up. Reputations preceding and all that crap. Odds were these two idiots were new to the scene and looking to make a name for themselves. Hell, I practically smelled the anesthesia and oil from their fresh implants. What they didn’t know was that Jensen was all the security this place needed.

  Also that Ricky likes to put these types on door duty specifically to have the shit kicked out of them.

  I guess that was one of the upsides of Dante’s. They were never short of disposable cyber goons. And it always helped my reputation when I was at the epicenter of random acts of violence. An imp flew over and perched near us, took out paper, barked odds to whoever would listen, and started taking bets on the impending fight.

  “Hey guys. You already know who I am. Let’s just not do this; I am really not in the mood.”

  The imp looked crestfallen.

  The first bouncer puffed his chest a bit and I could hear the subdermal servos firing up on his tech-enhanced muscles. The goons loomed over me.

  “There is one of you, and two of us—URK!” The bouncer croaked as I open palmed his windpipe before he could finish acting like a tough guy. He clutched his throat with both hands and backed off for the moment. I kicked him in the gut, doubling him over. The other goon made a quick jab at my jaw. I swerved, caught his wrist, broke his arm with an open-palm strike to the elbow, and threw him over the level railing. It looked like a scene from an old western flick as he hit a table below, flattening it.

  The tough guy I hit first reached for some kind of weapon, so I stomped on his wrist, snapping it. The bouncer screamed. I knelt down, put my finger to my lips and said “shhh.” When he stopped whimpering, I took his earpiece and sp
oke into the mic.

  “Ricky, if it isn’t too much trouble, quit watching everything on the monitors and send the fucking elevator.”

  The elevator dinged and opened. I stepped in and pressed the brass basement button. As the door closed I saw the imp collecting his winnings. I shrugged as if to say “I told ya so” to the downed bouncers. I thought about chucking them some credit coins and saying something about being sorry for the mess, but I didn’t want to be cliché. Those words rest solely with the holy Han Solo. The doors closed and took me down to Ricky’s office.

  “Ricky” was a nickname of a nickname. No one I knew knew what Mr. Rictus’s real name was. When I met him many years ago, he introduced himself to me only as “Rictus.” I wondered why, and then he smiled at me. It was a smile that chilled my spine. Not a creepy smile, and not a maniacal one. Rather, one that looked through me. It was cold and it was empty, with no humanity. A smile of a predator. Especially considering what I’d seen that night.

  One night drinking, Jensen, the twins, Maz, and I had a drunken conversation about his smile in this very bar. We tried to come up with the best description while throwing back tequila. I grinned to myself as I remembered that night. I’d come up with the line that won me free drinks for the remainder of the evening: “Ricky’s smile is the result of an angry reproductive butt fuck between the Joker and Willem Dafoe.”

  The elevators opened at the basement level and I headed down a cold cinderblock corridor, lit with those old dim red emergency lights wrapped in steel mesh. Random video cables and black power cords hung low. At the end of the hall amidst the gloom was a single red door, which was the entrance to an old fallout shelter. The hall had that horror movie vibe, and I was the stupid, nosy, sex-crazed teenager you yelled at to not go in there. Ricky had laid out a welcome mat that read “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” He had an off sense of humor. I heard the sound of a camera focusing and looked up to see an exterior camera staring at me.

  “Lemme in, Ricky,” I said as I gave the camera the finger and lit a smoke.

  The door went through several clicks of magna-locks releasing. There was a rush of pressure as it opened. The smell of incense, booze, and day-old sex came wafting out. For a shut-in, Ricky knew how to live.

  Ricky had rarely come out over the last few years. The Spinoli sisters only saw him quarterly, and he almost never made an appearance if too many people were around. Ricky preferred to live down in the earth and watch the world from his monitors. He claimed he hated what mankind had become. I can’t say I blamed him. Since G-Day, we had pretty much gone tits up.

  The room was dark, lit only by the glow of his monitors. Displayed were all angles of his club, as well as various parts of New Golgotha and several other locations I could not place with any certainty. Ricky sat in his authentic Star Trek The Next Generation captain’s chair, with his back to me. He also seemed to be watching both the laser disc version of Star Wars and a Betamax tape of The Last Starfighter while playing Halo 5.

  Ricky did like to multitask.

  On an ancient army cot beside him snored two nude girls. One was completely human with a sweet ass and a tribal tramp stamp. The other was a light-blue-skinned demoness with white hair and white Denochian tats. Probably some kind of Pride demon. Apparently both were Ricky’s fuck toys for the evening.

  I heard movement above me and as always I was startled to see Ricky’s pet snake. Ricky had installed a wire mesh drop ceiling so his fifteen-foot, goddamn terrifying serpent could always be above us. Sometimes it would hiss at passersby and drip its venom down. I had no idea where he got the damn thing, but Ricky always took great delight in smacking the mesh and pissing off the snake. Lord knows what he fed it. I remember asking what its name was and Ricky had only said, “Penance.”

  A screeching caw from the corner of the room caught my attention. As always, Ricky’s pet…condor vulture thing rattled its cage when it was ignored. I walked over and reached into the bloody bucket on the floor, pulled out a chunk of liver, and dropped it through the cage.

  “Eat up, Shrift,” I said to the raptor. It responded by trying to take off my fingers. I considered pulling my gun on the damn bird. It was secured by thick chain within the cage, but you can’t be too careful.

  “You should just punch the bastard,” Ricky said as he rose from his chair. “I know it makes me feel better.” He crossed the room and shook my hand and gave me one of those man hugs, a shake of one hand and a punch in the back. Ricky was shorter than me by about half a foot, but wider and thickly muscled. His head was shaved bare and he was covered in tattoos. He was wearing sunglasses and an old-fashioned work shirt, sleeveless, with his name embroidered on it. A chain wallet dangled by his side and his jeans were vintage. That was Ricky, a long-lost disciple of Mike Ness.

  Ricky went back to his chair, but not before kicking the cot. The girls woke up, startled. The Pride demoness flicked her forked tongue at Ricky and ruffled her wings. Ricky just stared at her. She shrank back, afraid. Not just scared, but real terror.

  “Out,” he said with no inflection.

  The girls gathered their clothes and quickly left. I just crossed my arms and avoided eye contact. Like I said, I don’t have any sexual hangups. It’s just that naked slutty bits reminded me of the dry spell I was in. After the red door sealed shut again, Ricky tapped a comm link switch on his main control panel and murmured an instruction. I glanced up and saw a bouncer come onscreen and escort them out of the building. I pulled up a chair and kicked back. Ricky handed me a beer I never asked for, and I took it. Never look a free drink in the mouth—not at Dante’s, anyway.

  “So, are the sisters going to be mad you’re giving away free booze?” I asked, keeping the tone light.

  “Pretty sure I got the human one pregnant. The hell bitch is going to smell it on her soon and probably rip her apart,” Ricky said as if I wasn’t in the room. Well, so much for a light fucking tone.

  “Ricky, Jensen said you wanted to see me before I meet with my client. So out with it, bud. It isn’t like you to set up a meet personally. What’s up?”

  Ricky turned and stared right at me. And it was hard to meet his gaze, even behind his sunglasses. Ricky wasn’t human. I didn’t know what he was. I didn’t need to know. Anyone with a sense of self-preservation could sense his otherworldly aura. One of a predator, and a powerful one. But I had known him for the last 122 years. He was one of the few people I knew who lived without aging. He didn’t ask my secrets; I didn’t ask his. All that aside, he still freaked me the fuck out.

  “Tonight, you are about to be set on a path. I don’t know how this is going to play out. The client you are meeting tonight is a very old friend of mine. Do yourself a favor and don’t lie to him. He will know if you do, and it will upset him greatly.”

  I just looked at Ricky and sipped at my drink. This personality shift in Ricky wasn’t unexpected. In the course of our “friendship” Ricky and I had raised some hell, thrown back some drinks, laughed, and lived. I had worked both with him and for him and made a small fortune in credits. Most of the things in this office from pre-G-Day, I got for him. But over the last few decades he had become more sullen. Morose. The life of the party was now a watcher standing guard for the arrival of something.

  “Well, fine. Be an esoteric prick.” I finished my beer and set it down, and got up to leave. Ricky reached out and caught my arm.

  “Salem, this is huge. Steel yourself.” He reached over and flicked the switch that opened the door. I walked out but looked back just once. I couldn’t see his eyes, but I could see a stupid grin on Ricky’s face. Maybe my “friend” was still in there.

  Chapter Three

  A Vinyl String Bikini and Booty Shorts

  “Are you an immortal?” the man across the table asked me.

  The bluntness was invigorating.

  Ricky told me not to lie to this man, that he was friends with him. This “Father Grimm.”

  Grimm steepled his fingers
and stared. Dead into my eyes. This wasn’t the first time someone had tried to stare me down and intimidate me. Yet there was something different about this man. He was pale, but not sickly. Just a man who avoided the sun. His jet-black hair started at his widow’s peak and ended in a slicked ponytail. He wore his short, black beard neatly trimmed. But it was his eyes. They were gray, almost metallic. They looked at me with earnestness. He was not trying to be intimidating. He simply was.

  “Yes,” I responded. “I am over 200 years old.”

  It felt good to admit that out loud. Very few of my associates knew that much about me. They suspected a lot, but confirmed nothing.

  “Where were you on G-Day?” he asked.

  I paused a moment. I hadn’t really thought about that for some time. “Actually, not too far from where we are right now in old Baltimore.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “Drinking at an Irish pub.” I smiled.

  I lit a smoke and let my brain ramble a bit, taking in what I saw of the man. His thick black robes were actually an ancient cassock. The bracelet he wore on his right wrist was made of aged bone, as was the belt he wore. Again I was brought back to his eyes; they were deep with old knowledge. All signs pointed to his agelessness.

  Another immortal.

  Trust me, on the off chance we meet, we can spot each other.

  I detected no energy-based technology on him, yet he had somehow managed to get past Jensen. Also, I smelled metal on him. Not tech. Specifically, old metal, as well as the oil one keeps on a blade so it doesn’t corrode in its sheath.

  No technology. Concealed blades. Robes. Ancient.