Laura Anne Gilman - Tales of the Cosa Nostradamus Read online

  Stories of the Cosa Nostradamus

  Inferno

  Overrush

  Palimpsest

  Illumination

  Dusted

  Bonus Features

  © 2010 Laura Anne Gilman

  published by Book View Press

  Other titles available in digital format by Laura Anne Gilman

  STAYING DEAD

  CURSE THE DARK

  BRING IT ON

  BURNING BRIDGES

  FREE FALL

  BLOOD FROM STONE

  HARD MAGIC

  PACK OF LIES (February 2011)

  FLESH AND FIRE: BOOK I OF THE VINEART WAR

  WEIGHT OF STONE: BOOK II OF THE VINEART WAR (October 2010)

  http://www.lauraannegilman.net

  PUBLISHING INFORMATION

  Visit Laura Anne Gilman's bookshelf at

  http://www.bookviewcafe.com/index.php/Laura-Anne-Gilman/

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Published by Book View Café and Smashwords

  What may I do with this file? What may I not do with this file?

  Please see the Book View Café FAQ for the answers:

  http://www.bookviewcafe.com/FAQs

  For more eBooks, visit the Book View Café eBookstore: http://www.bookviewcafe.com/BVC-eBookstore/

  “Inferno” was written expressly for BookView Café, as part of the backstory for BLOOD FROM STONE, and has not appeared anywhere else. This story takes place several months before the events of STAYING DEAD.

  Inferno

  "Breathe. Breathe, damn you!"

  The pile of fur on the wooden table lay still, inanimate.

  "Damn." A world of frustration in that one word, frustration, and anger directed both outward, and in. The temptation was too great for the third figure in the room.

  "This would be a bad time to say I told you so?"

  "Yes."

  "I shall refrain, then."

  There might have been a faint smile on his face. Or perhaps not. "You are a pestilence and a plague."

  "As you say, master."

  The man shook his head, reaching down and drawing a sheet over the motionless form.

  "We'll try again tomorrow. Ensure that the blood is fresh, this time."

  The other speaker looked down at the dark splatters on the leather apron wrapped around his squat body. "Yes, master."

  oOo

  P.B. had woken that afternoon in a foul mood, the sheet tangled around his legs and his thick white fur damp with sweat. Restless dreams he didn’t want to remember mixed with the sound of jackhammers hard at work on the sidewalk outside his one-room basement apartment. The whites of his eyes were scratchy from exhaustion, and his claws ached from a lack of calcium in his diet. Only the fact that he had two jobs pending and no payment due on either one until he was done got him to consider moving at all. Life in the big city cost big bucks, even living in a dive like this one. Time to get up and at ‘em.

  The demon dragged himself out of bed and went to rummage in the pantry for something still edible. Nothing appealed. A note tacked to the empty, non-working fridge reminded him that he had a third job that evening.

  “And the excitement just never ends, does it?” His voice was harsh, raspy, and self-disgusted.

  He poured a cup of cold coffee out of the coffee maker, and washed it down with a pumpernickel bagel, tearing chunks out of it with determined bites. A little dry, but not bad. He really needed to go food shopping at some point. Or stop by Valere’s and mooch off her. But for now, the work. Or what he would be able to accomplish, seeing as how one client had been avoiding him, and the other didn’t seem to know his elbow from his teakettle when it came to binding contracts...

  Humans. Bah.

  Grabbing his grey trench coat and snappy-brimmed hat from the coat tree by the door, P.B. slipped his sunglasses out of the pocket, adjusted the arms so that they would stay up on his decidedly not-designed-for-sunglasses nose, and went out the door into the afternoon sunlight to see a man about a package.

  oOo

  Despite his lack of optimism, the afternoon had been surprisingly productive, closing out a week of frustration on a much better note. Having a check for the remainder of one job in the pocket of his trench helped, too. P.B. supposed that was what was making him so uncharacteristically mellow when he arrived to take on his third and last job of the day.

  "Tell us a story!"

  The demon settled himself more comfortably against the tree he was leaning against, overcoat folded underneath him to make a rough sort of padded seat, and snorted, his flat black nose perfectly designed to make that noise. "Why should I?"

  "Because if you don't, we won't settle down and go to bed. And mom'll be pissed if we're still awake when she gets back." The speaker had a squeaky, self-confident voice, too confident for something that weighed about as much as one of his toes.

  "Jailhouse lawyer." P.B. grumbled with no discernable affection, and the speaker giggled, despite not knowing exactly what the term meant. He shifted a little further, allowing the seven piskie pups he was minding to rearrange themselves comfortably around him, their tiny wings catching in his fur and tugging free, more durable than they looked. "All right. "What do you little monsters want to hear this time?"

  The eldest, who had been acting as speaker for her siblings, rested her fuzzy red head against his arm. "Tell us about the first demons. Tell us about your people."

  There were low lights around the lab, illuminating glass beakers and tubing, strange metal objects. Ivory-white long bones hung from wooden beams. Acid-washed lumps of cartilage and stoppered jars of gray marrow rested on shelves along the wall.

  A figure moved out of the shadows and stood by the table. Its length matched the height of his shoulder, the wood dark and polished by years of use. Years of blood and flesh soaked into its grain. "I'm sorry, little brother. I told him it was a bad idea, but he's not one for listening on a good day."

  "Hurts.” A whisper, vocal chords relearning their use in this new, uncomfortable form.

  "I know." One hand reached down to touch the prone form, black, hooked claws fully extended, like a dog’s. "It will all be over soon." One way or another. They either lived, and went off where master sent them... or they found release in death.

  "Didn't want this." Its claws were sheathed under thick skinned pads, attached to over-muscled arms now resting limply on the table, held down by wide leather straps and buckles. Like, and unalike, the method of birth was still the same.

  "Nobody ever asks us, little brother.” Irony, there. He had many brothers. And no brotherhood at all. “We don’t have a choice."

  oOo

  "They're asleep?"

  Unlike the pups, momma piskie had no charms, winsome or otherwise. Wraith-thin, famine-thin, with pointed ears and a mane of dry red hair running down to her tissue-leather wings, her triangle-shaped face reminded P.B. of a documentary he'd seen once on cobras, and the lidless stare of her sky-blue eyes merely reinforced that. But what she lacked in physical appeal she more than made up for in sheer stubborn doggedness—one of the reasons why piskies had not only survived in the big bad city, but thrived enough to qualif
y as one of the major communities living in the greenspace of Central Park.

  “After four stories, a pint of ice cream–you owe me seven-forty–and at least one threat of demonic violence on their still-tender bodies, yeah. Sleeping like the innocents they aren’t.”

  Einnie laughed, the sound like wind on cold water, and settled on the park bench next to him. “Thank you again for taking them on such short notice. Nobody else will watch them, any more.”

  “I can’t imagine why.” His tenor growl was dry. Of all the members of the cosa nostradamus, the supernatural world, piskies were the worst: annoying, unaesthetic pranksters with no sense of personal boundaries and no concept of loyalty to anything other than their pups, and even then only until they were out of the nest. That said, they could take a prank as well as play one. That covered a multitude of sins, in his personal ledger. And they seemed to like him, with the same sort of casual affection he could give them. It was a fair balance.

  “They’re handfuls, all right,” Einnie said in acknowledgement. Understatement of the year. “But they adore you. Gods only know why.”

  “You don’t think I’m adorable?”

  Einnie gave him a thorough up-and-down, the morning sunlight making them both squint. Piskies were nocturnal by nature, P.B. a night owl by choice and circumstance. “I think you need to take yourself home and give yourself a thorough brushing-out.” She reached over and snagged three tiny pine cones from a rough matting of hair. “You look like hell, P.B.”

  “Always the charmer. Go sleep with your offspring, you miserable creature, you.”

  Einnie dug her thin claws into the matting, holding him in place when he would have moved away, and combed it out with surprising gentleness.

  “You’re a good friend. Thank you.”

  oOo

  "What are we?"

  "We are nothing.” His own voice, flat and factual. “Always remember that."

  oOo

  Two days later, the memory of her words still puzzled him. He could count on his four-fingered paw the number of times someone had called him friend, much less a good friend. It wasn’t deserved–if there was one thing he had perfected over the years, it was a merciless self-evaluation–but he supposed that her standards weren’t all that high to begin with, being a piskie.

  “Hey, short stuff, move it!”

  He barely had time to sidestep before the cyclist was past him, blithely ignoring the bike lane set aside for him in order to put his Lycra-clad body in the way of innocent pedestrians and baby-carriage-pushing nannies. It was only April, but the winter had been a long one, and just the hint of warmth in the sunlight caused humans to flock to the greenspace, spreading blankets and baring occasionally unfortunate amounts of skin.

  P.B. took one look at the sea of bodies and skirted around them, not wanting to deal with any more people today than he had to in order to finish off the job. He knew some humans on a social basis, but they were Talents, magic-users. They could see beyond white fur, black claws, eyes that were cat-slitted and the color of dried blood. He had no such faith in these human Nulls to do other than scream and point. Or point weapons. Idiot humans.

  Not that the Talents were any better, overall. Humans were all annoying creatures.

  “Morning, master fatae.”

  P.B. barely had time to nod in response to the greeting before the teenager was past him, dodging around him and speeding down the track on bright yellow rollerblades, the magic-energy humans called current snapping around him with the energy only the very young have. In his wake, people smiled and raised their faces again to the sunlight, infected with his joyous celebration

  All right, he admitted, letting the Talent’s energy reach him as well, he was being particularly cranky this morning. Babysitting the piskie pups while Einnie was out hunting had left him uneasy, somehow, in a way he’d not been able to shake. No reason for it–but being a demon meant that you learned to listen to your instincts. It was how you survived.

  So why this unease? Don’t be a moron, old man. Think it through. When did the unease begin? Not just this morning–you just finally had enough food in your stomach to think about it today, is all. When did the need for babysitting begin?

  The short, plush fur on his face wrinkled like a shar-pei’s as he thought. Six, no ten months ago. He had just finished a job for Valere, the one where her partner almost spit blood on the cop and that storefront window got shattered, but before he did the courier gig from Chicago to Miami for the Council.

  Why? And why him? All right, that was easy enough to answer–the piskies wanted someone not a piskie, someone who would be enough of a sucker to put up with their impossible offspring. In a word, him. Not that he had any objection to doing a favor now and again–favors were as valuable as currency, in the Cosa Nostradamus—but that fact itself weighed against so many favors being given out. Imbalance bothered him. Owing bothered him. Being owed bothered him more.

  And why did they need to go outside their own community? Would another piskie even be willing to watch the pups? Piskie males were flighty things, even with their own offspring. Piskie mommas needed to hunt for their own broods. Unmated piskies... P.B. realized that he didn’t know any unmated piskies. Had never thought of it before.

  So why were the mommas so worried about their nests being unprotected at night while they hunted? What had happened ten months ago, to cause that worry? While someone with a grudge over a prank might go after an adult, pups were considered off-limits in just about every case. There weren’t enough fatae that they could afford to let their children become pawns in any kind of fatal arguments.

  The only thing that would really be a danger to a pup would be a feral dog, or some other four-legged predator, and even a newling piskie pup could outwit an animal. No need to bring him into it.

  P.B. shrugged the question–and his unease–off. Not his problem. Reaching into his overcoat pocket to make sure the cash was still there–his kind of job didn’t take personal checks or credit cards–he calculated how much time he had to finish this gig and still get to the bank. He had meant to make the deposit yesterday, but then things got busy, and he preferred to use the ATM when nobody else was around. It wasn’t the risk of being seen–he walked through Times Square on Wednesday matinee afternoons and nobody even blinked–but too many of the damn machines were above his head, so he had to climb up on the machine in order to use it. Humiliating.

  In the meanwhile, there was a handoff to be made. And he’d earned a treat, for jobs well-done.

  “Double scoop of pistachio, please,” he said to the clerk behind the ice cream cart.

  The human blinked at him, but whether it was from the sight of a four-foot tall figure wearing a trench coat and slouch hat, or the fact of someone asking for ice cream this early in the morning, or if it was the white-furred paw that handed him the money, P.B. didn’t know.

  He used to be self-conscious about going out among humans. That wore off long ago.

  “Thanks.”

  ”No problem, man. Enjoy.”

  He was, to paraphrase Lord of the Rings, no man. But the ice cream still tasted good. So did the fact that he had been able to move the envelope from his other hand into the side panel of the ice cream cart without the human noticing.

  Moving away with a casual slow walk, a shadow caught the corner of his gaze and he made as though to adjust his hat, keeping his gaze carefully averted. He did not want to know who was making the pickup. That wasn’t his concern: he was just the courier.

  Maybe his unease had nothing at all to do with the piskies themselves, and more to do with the stories they asked for. He had no shortage of stories: the Cosa Nostradamus had more than its share of characters, from the snoots-in-the-air angels to the sea creatures no land-dwelling piskie would ever encounter except second-hand. If nothing else, he could tell the wee bits about humans, the non-fatae strangers they saw only as shadowy figures passing beyond their nest. But for some reason the eldest had become
fascinated by him, by his kind. He was the only demon in Manhattan right now; as far as he knew, perhaps the only one on the East Coast. They were few and far between, and not prone to socializing with each other. Too many memories, and none of them good.

  Taking his ice cream, he followed his whim and wandered off the main path, weaving his way around the youngsters playing some sort of game with chalk and sticks.

  Of all the things in the world he never understood, it was the concept of play. No matter how often someone tried to explain it to him, they might as well have been speaking in a foreign tongue. But others seemed to enjoy it; need it, even.

  Fun, he understood that. He could and did have fun. But sheer physical release for no purpose other than to laugh...

  Valere tried to explain it once. Lots of chemistry and biology and brain stem stimulation. He’d nodded, and listened, and kept his thoughts to himself.

  He wasn’t human. He wasn’t truly fatae. He was demon.

  And none of his earlier thoughts explained why he had woken up every morning this past month with nightmares echoing in his head.

  oOo

  “Good morning, demon.”

  P.B. looked up and grinned without humor, showing an array of sharp-edged teeth. He had molars better suited for grinding and crunching, but they were set back, away from the tearing and rending tools. An intentional design, for fearsome first impressions. The small, gray-tailed creature sitting on the tree limb above him didn’t seem at all fazed by it.

  “Good morning, you mindless little meatball.”

  The creature merely grinned back at him, nonplussed by the insult. Even if P.B. had been in the mood to chase up a tree for such a small mouthful, it would outrun him faster than thought. Easier to order a pizza. Safer, too. You tried not to eat a fellow Cosa member. Terribly bad manners.