Dead Red - M.R. Forbes Page 0,2

I ran my hand over my bald scalp, scraping off the sweat and wiping it on the arm of the sofa. I grabbed my coat and found my pocket watch. Six-fifteen. Four hours would have to do. Again.

I didn't know who or what had taken control of Dannie. I called it Death because I had no idea what else to call it, and it seemed to suit. I mean, any of the heads of the Houses could probably have pulled off the trick, couldn't they? No. I tried to convince myself, even though I knew they couldn't. Death magic was only for necromancers and whoever had mind-fucked me was no necro. I was pretty certain I was still the only one, and even if I wasn't, it would take a long time to learn to raise a corpse without touching it. I'd been going for five years past the sell-by date, and I was nowhere close to being able to do it.

Without a House wizard, and without a necro, that left... what? The idea was terrifying. All kinds of shit had shown up when the magnetic poles had reversed, and magical energy had made its way back to the surface. Everything changed in some random way or another. Orcs, goblins, ogres, werewolves, vampires, man-eating plants, giant spiders, the list went on and on. Some of it was good, some of it was bad. All of it was crazy. None of it fit what I had experienced.

No. Not nothing. The mask was like that. The dice. An evil spirit somehow magicked into a set of ancient artifacts that had arguably fallen into my possession through some pretty random fate. Arguably. I wasn't convinced the spirit itself hadn't manipulated the whole thing.

If the mask was an evil spirit, then the voice was an evil spirit. Except, it never seemed evil to me. Just pissed because I refused to die. Really pissed.

Therefore, Death.

I was rightly terrified.

What to do? What can you do? You can fight death, and I had been fighting for a long time. You can't beat it in the end. Death always wins, just like he said. The only other option was to put it off for as long as I could. That meant staying alive, which meant having a nice savings account to pay for my illegal and increasingly hard to find meds.

Hard to find is what brought me away from Chicago. I dropped by Dalton's with a nice fat prepayment, enough for three doses, and he told me he could only get me one more. Why didn't he tell me sooner? Dannie asked him not to. She was going to tell me herself. She never had the chance.

I was still in pretty good shape. The hacking and blood was normal. I wasn't taking any chances. There was still one person I knew who had a knack for getting information and could probably locate the prize. I found Prithi's home phone online and gave her a call. I figured she owed me one after I saved her life.

I got to my feet, went to the bathroom, stripped down and showered. I avoided looking in the mirror when I got out, heading back into the single room where I lived with nothing on.

Prithi was sitting on the couch.

"Towel?" she said, looking me over, her cheeks darkening. The first time I'd met Prithi, she'd been timid and frightened to the point that she had wet herself. I don't know if it was from spending a couple months around me, if her 'Azeban' Machine personality was starting to spill over into the real world, or if somehow she was talking to Dannie across the great divide. Whatever the cause, she'd been upping the snark lately.

"Knocking?" I replied, ignoring her request and heading over to the laundry basket where I kept my clean clothes. Just because I was dying didn't mean I had to be wrinkled and smelly. I grabbed a fresh t-shirt and a pair of jeans, pulling them on and belting the pants to keep them up.

"My parents want to talk to you."

I winced and looked up at the ceiling. I could hear their feet above me, and smell the masala getting started.

"What about?"

"They wanted me to invite you to dinner."

I paused. That one caught me off-guard. "What?"

"My mom met me at the top of the stairs last night. I didn't think she saw us, but she did."

I shot people to death. I put my hands on them and sucked their life