Nightingale's Lament Read online

  “It started two weeks ago, John. Everything normal, just another day. Until one of the main turbines suddenly stopped working. My people investigated and found it had been sabotaged. Not a professional job—the whole interior had simply been … ripped apart. My people repaired it and got it back online in under an hour, but by then systems were breaking down all through the plant. And that’s been the pattern ever since. As fast as we fix things, something else goes wrong. It’s costing us a fortune in spare parts alone. There’s nothing sophisticated about the sabotage, just brutal, senseless destruction.

  “No-one ever sees the saboteur. You’ve seen the security I’ve hired, but they haven’t made a blind bit of difference. I’ve got cameras everywhere, and they never see anything either. I’ve had the videotapes checked by experts, but there’s no trace of anything. We can’t even tell how the bastard gets in or out! The destruction’s getting steadily worse. Repairs and reconstruction are starting to fall behind. It’s only a matter of time before it starts affecting our power output. And a whole lot of people depend on the electricity we produce here.”

  And if Prometheus Inc. goes down, so do you, I thought, but I was still being polite, so I didn’t say it aloud.

  “How about rivals?” I said. “Perhaps someone in the same line of business, looking to profit at your expense?”

  “There are always competitors,” said Vincent, frowning. “But there’s no-one else big enough to take over if we go under. Prometheus Inc. supplies 12.4 per cent of the Nightside’s electricity needs. If we crash, there’ll be power outages and brownouts all across the Nightside, and no-one wants that. The other companies would have to push themselves almost to destruction to take up the slack.”

  “All right,” I said. “How about people who just don’t like you? Made any new enemies recently?”

  He smiled briefly. “A month ago, I would have said I didn’t have an enemy in the world. But now…” He looked at the wedding photo on his desk again. “I’ve been having dreams … about Melinda and Quinn, and the day they died. And I have to wonder … if the bastard who killed them is coming after me.”

  I hadn’t seen that twist coming. “Why you? And why wait six years?”

  “Maybe the killer thinks I know something, though I’m damned if I know what. And just maybe it’s all started up again because you’re back, John. An awful lot of old grudges and feuds have bubbled to the surface since you returned to the Nightside.”

  He had a point there, so I decided to change the subject. “Let’s talk about the actual damage here. You said it was … unsophisticated.”

  “Hell yes,” said Vincent. “It’s clear the saboteur has no real technical knowledge. There are a dozen places he could have hit that would shut the whole plant down if they were even interfered with. But none a layman could hope to recognise. And, of course, there’s the secret process at the heart of Prometheus Inc. that makes this whole operation possible. I invented it. But that’s kept inside a steel vault, protected by state-of-the-art high-tech defence systems. Even the Authorities would have a hard time getting to it without the right pass codes.” Vincent leaned forward across the desk and fixed me with a pleading gaze. “You’ve got to help me, John. It’s not only my livelihood we’re talking about here. If Prometheus Inc. is forced offline, and power levels drop all across the Nightside, people are going to start dying. Hundreds of thousands of lives could be at risk.”

  I should have seen what was coming. But I always was a sucker for a sob story.

  Vincent took me on a tour through the plant, the underground section that outsiders never got a chance to see. It was all spotlessly clean and eerily quiet. The actual generators themselves turned out to be much smaller than I expected, and made hardly a sound. There were panels and gauges and readouts and any amount of gleaming high tech, none of which meant anything to me, though I was careful to make impressed sounds at regular intervals. Every bit of it had been designed by Vincent, back when he was the Mechanic, rather than the Manager. He kept up a running commentary throughout the tour, most of which went right over my head, while I nodded and smiled and kept an eye out for the saboteur. Eventually Vincent ran out of things to point at, and we stopped at the end of a cavernous hall, before a large, closed, solid steel door. He looked at me, clearly expecting me to say something.

  “It’s all … very clean,” I said. “And very impressive. Though it’s hard to believe you produce so much of the Nightside’s electricity with … just this. I was expecting something ten times the size.”

  Vincent grinned. “None of the power comes from this. All the machinery does is convert the power produced in there into electricity. The secret lies in my own special process, behind this sealed door. A scientific marvel, if I do say so myself.”

  I glared suddenly at the steel door. “If you’re about to tell me you’ve got a nuclear pile in there…”

  “No, no…”

  “Or a contained singularity…”

  “Nothing so crude, John. My process is perfectly safe, with no noxious by-products. Though I’m afraid I can’t show it to you. Some things have to remain secret.”

  And then he broke off, and we both looked round sharply as we heard something. A harsh juddering began in one of the machines at the far end of the hall, and black smoke billowed suddenly from a vent, before an alarm shrilled loudly and the machine shut itself down. Vincent shrank back against the steel door.

  “He’s here! The saboteur … he’s never got this far before. He must have been following us all this time … Are you armed, John?”

  “I don’t use guns,” I said. “I’ve never felt the need.”

  “Normally I don’t, either, but ever since this shit began happening, I’ve felt a lot more secure knowing I’ve got a little something to even out the odds.” Vincent produced a gleaming silver gun from inside his jacket. It looked sleek and deadly and very futuristic. Vincent hefted it proudly. “It’s a laser. Amplified light to fight the forces of darkness. Another of my inventions. I always meant to do more with it, but the power plant took over my life. I can’t see anyone, John. Can you see anyone?”

  A machine a little further down the hall exploded suddenly. More black smoke, and the hum of the other machines rose significantly, as though they were having to work harder. A third machine blew apart like a grenade, throwing sharp-edged steel shrapnel almost the length of the hall. Some of the overhead lights flickered and went out. There were shadows everywhere now, deep and dark. Some of the other machines began making unpleasant, threatening noises. And still there was no sign of the saboteur anywhere.

  Vincent’s face was pale and sweaty, and his hand trembled as he swept his laser gun back and forth, searching for a target. “Come on, come on,” he said hoarsely. “You’re on my territory now. I’m ready for you.”

  Something pale flashed briefly at the corner of my eye. I snapped around, but it was already gone. It appeared again, just a glimpse of white in the shadows between two machines. It flashed back and forth, appearing and disappearing in the blink of an eye, darting up and down the length of the hall. Glimmers of shimmering white as fleeting as moonlight, but I thought I was beginning to make out an impression of a pale, haunted face. It moved in the shadows, never venturing out into the light. But it was gradually drawing nearer. Heading for us, or perhaps for the steel door behind us and the secret vulnerable heart of Prometheus Inc.

  My first thought was that it had to be a ghost of some kind, maybe a poltergeist. Which would explain why the CCTV cameras hadn’t been able to see anything. Ghosts could operate in science- or magic-dominated areas, provided their motivation was strong enough. In which case, Vincent needed a priest or an exorcist, not a private eye. I suggested as much to Vincent, and he shrugged angrily.

  “I had my people do a full background check on this location before we began construction; and they didn’t turn up anything. The whole area was supposed to be entirely free from magical or paranormal influences. That’s wh
y I built here. I’m the Mechanic, I build things. It’s a talent, just like your talent for finding things, John. I don’t know about ghosts. You’re the expert on these matters. What do we do?”

  “Depends what the ghost wants,” I said.

  “It wants to destroy me! I would have thought that was obvious. What was that?”

  The white figure was flashing in and out of the shadows, on every side at once, drawing steadily closer all the time. Shimmering white, ragged round the edges, with long, reaching arms and a dark malevolent glare in an indistinct face. It gestured abruptly, and suddenly all the shrapnel scattered across the floor rose and hammered us like a metallic hailstorm. I put my arms over my head and did my best to shield Vincent with my body. The rain of objects ended as suddenly as it began, and we looked up to see something pale and dangerous squatting on one of the machines, tearing it apart with unnatural strength. Vincent howled with rage and fired his laser, but the figure was gone long before the light beam could reach it. I glared about me, my back pressed hard against the steel door. There were no other exits, no way to escape. So I did the only thing I could. I used my talent.

  I don’t like to use it too often, or for too long. It helps my enemies find me.

  I reached inside, concentrating, and my third eye, my private eye, slowly opened. And just like that, I could see her clearly. As though my psychic gaze had focused her, made her plain at last, she walked out of the shadows and into the light, standing openly before us. She nodded to me, then glared at Vincent with her deep dark eyes. I knew her immediately, though she looked very different from her wedding photo. Melinda Dusk, dead these six years, still wearing her wonderful white wedding dress, though it hung in tatters about her corpse-pale body. Her raven black hair fell in thick ringlets to her bare shoulders. Her lips were a pale purple. Her eyes … were black on black, like two deep holes in her face. She looked angry, haunted, vicious. The Hanged Man’s Daughter, mistress of the dark forces, still beautiful in a cold, unnatural way. She raised one hand to point accusingly at Vincent, her fingernails grown long in the grave. I glanced at Vincent. He was breathing fast, his whole body trembling, but he didn’t look particularly surprised.

  I shut down my talent, but she was still there. I took a step forward, and the ghost turned her awful unblinking gaze upon me. I held up my hands to show they were empty.

  “Melinda,” I said. “It’s me, John.”

  She looked away. I wasn’t important. All her attention, all her rage, was focused on Vincent.

  “Talk to me, Vincent,” I said quietly. “What’s going on here? You knew who and what it was all along, didn’t you? Didn’t you! Why is she so angry with you, angry enough to pull her up out of her grave after six years?”

  “I didn’t know,” he said. “I swear I didn’t know!”

  “He knew,” said Melinda. Her voice was clear but quiet, like a whisper in my ear, as though it had to travel impossible distances to reach me. “You chose this place well, Vincent. As far as you could get from my family plot, and still be in the Nightside. And the sacrifices you made here in secret, before construction began, the innocent blood you spilled, and the promises you made … they would have kept out anyone else but me. I am an avatar of the dark, and every shadow is a doorway to me. Six years it took me, to track you down. But you could never hope to keep me out, not when the only thing that matters to me is still here. I will have my revenge, Vincent. Dear good friend Vincent. For what you did, to me and to Quinn.”

  And that was when I finally understood. I looked at Vincent, too shocked even to be angry, for the moment.

  “You killed them,” I said. “You murdered Melinda and Quinn. But you were their friend…”

  “Best friends,” said Vincent. He’d stopped shaking, and his voice was steady. “I would have done anything for you two, Melinda, but when the time came, you let me down. So I poisoned the bridal cup. It was necessary. And surprisingly easy. Who’d ever suspect the best man? No-one ever did, not even Walker himself.” He looked at me suddenly, and he was smiling. “I was pretty sure my little problem had to be Melinda, but I needed you here to make certain. That’s why I asked Walker to contact you, on my behalf. Because your talent to find things holds her in one place, one shape. All you have to do is hold her here, and my laser light will disrupt her, take her apart so thoroughly she’ll never be able to put herself back together again. Do this for me, John, and I’ll make you a partner in Prometheus Inc. You’ll be wealthy and powerful beyond your wildest dreams.”

  “They were my friends, too,” I said. “And there isn’t enough money in the Nightside to turn me against a friend.”

  “Be my friend, John,” said Melinda. She’d drifted very close now, and I could feel the cold of the grave radiating from her. “Be my friend and Quinn’s, one last time. Find the source of Vincent’s power. His secret source.”

  Vincent fired his laser at her. The light beam punched right through her shimmering form, but if it hurt her she didn’t show it.

  I called up my talent again, focusing my inner eye, my private eye from which nothing can be hidden, and immediately I knew where the secret was, and how to get to it. I turned to the steel door and punched in the correct entry codes. The heavy door swung slowly open. Vincent shouted something, but I wasn’t listening. I walked through the opening, Melinda drifting after me, and there in the underground chamber Vincent had made specially for him, was the reason Vincent had been able to produce power so easily. It was Quinn, the Sunslinger.

  He still looked a lot like he had in his wedding photo, but like Melinda, he had been through some changes. Quinn still wore his black leathers, though the steel and silver were dirty and corroded. His body was contained in a spirit bottle, a great glass chamber designed to contain the souls of the dead. Electricity cables penetrated the sides of the bottle, plugging into Quinn’s eye sockets, his wedged-open mouth, and holes cut in his torso. Quinn, the Sunslinger, whose power had been to channel and direct energies from the sun, had been made into a battery. The spirit bottle trapped his soul with his dead body and made him controllable. The cables leached his power, and Vincent’s machines turned it into electricity to feed the Nightside.

  Ingenious. But then, the Mechanic had never been afraid to think big.

  Melinda hovered beside the spirit bottle, staring at what had been done to her dead love with yearning eyes, unable to touch him for all her ghostly power. I ran my fingertips down the glass side of the spirit bottle, testing its strength.

  “Get away from that, John,” said Vincent.

  I looked round to see Vincent stepping through the doorway, his laser gun trained on me. He laughed, a little shakily.

  “Ordinary guns are no use against you, John. I know that. I know all about that clever trick you do with bullets. But this is a laser, and it will quite definitely kill you. It’s a clever little device. Draws its power directly from Quinn. So you’re going to do exactly what I tell you to do. You’re going to use your talent to fix and hold Melinda in one place, one shape, while I kill her. Or I’ll kill you. Slowly and very nastily.”

  “How will you stop Melinda without me?” I said.

  “Oh, I’m sure I’ll be able to think of something, now I know for sure it’s Melinda. Maybe I’ll build another spirit bottle, just for her.”

  “What happened?” I said, careful to keep my voice calm and my hands still. “You three were friends for years, closer than family. So what happened, Vincent? What turned you into a murderer?”

  “They let me down,” he said flatly. “When I needed them most, they weren’t there for me. I dreamed up this power station, you see. A way at last to provide dependable electricity for the Nightside. A licence to print money. My big score, at last. And all I needed to make it work was Quinn. I was sure studying his powers under laboratory conditions would enable me to build something that would power the plant. But when I told him, he turned me down. Said his secrets were family secrets and not for sharing. After al
l the things I’d done for him! I talked to Melinda, tried to get her to persuade him, but she didn’t want to know either. She and Quinn were planning a new life together, and there was no room in it for me.

  “But I’d already sunk all my money into this project, and a hell of a lot more I’d borrowed from some really unpleasant people. It had never occurred to me that Quinn would turn me down. The project was already under way. It had to go on. So I killed Quinn and Melinda. It was their own fault, for putting their own selfish happiness ahead of my needs, my success. I would have made them partners. Made them rich. After they were dead, my financial associates retrieved Quinn’s body from his grave, leaving a duplicate behind, and brought him here. Where he ended up working for me anyway. My … silent partner, if you like.”

  Melinda looked at me, silently pleading. The spirit bottle was full of light, with no shadows she could use. I looked at the bottle thoughtfully. Vincent aimed the laser at my stomach.

  “Don’t even think it, John. If you break the bottle, that breaks the connection between Quinn and my machines, and that would shut down the whole plant. No more of my electricity for the Nightside. Power cuts everywhere. Thousands of people could die.”

  “Ah well,” I said. “What did they ever do for me?”

  It was the easiest thing in the world for my talent to find the entry point into the spirit bottle and nudge it open just a crack. That was all Quinn needed. His dead body convulsed and suddenly blazed with light. Brilliant sunlight, too bright for mortal eyes to look upon. Vincent and I both had to turn away, shielding our eyes with our arms. The spirit bottle exploded, unable to contain the released energies of the Sunslinger. Glass fragments showered down. I made myself turn back and look through dazzled eyes as Quinn strode out of the wreckage, pulling the cables out of his face and his body. They fell to twitch restlessly on the floor, like severed limbs.

  The dead man looked upon the ghost, and they smiled at each other, together again for the first time since their wedding day. And Vincent stumbled forward with his laser gun. His eyes weren’t really clear yet, and I wasn’t entirely sure who he was trying to point the gun at, but I didn’t feel like taking any chances. So I reached down, grabbed one of the twitching cables from the floor, and lunged forward to jam one end of the cable into Vincent’s eye. It plunged into his eye socket, burrowing beyond, and Vincent screamed horribly as his own machines sucked the life energies out of him. He was dead before his twitching body hit the floor.