-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MISSING, PRESUMED UNDEAD Jeremy Davies -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A DF Books NERDs Release Copyright ©2005 by Jeremy Davies First published by DDP, January 2005 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in Canada by Double Dragon eBooks, a division of Double Dragon Publishing Inc. of Markham Ontario, Canada. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from Double Dragon Publishing Inc. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Published by: Double Dragon eBooks PO Box 54016 1-5762 Highway 7 East Markham, Ontario L3P 7Y4 CANADA double-dragon-ebooks.com Layout and Cover Illustration by Deron Douglas Edited by Chere Gruver ISBN: 1-55404-214-3 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm sick of it! I'm sick of all the garbage I've seen written about Frank! His life. His death. How he got his start in the business. I'm as sick as a five-day dead kobold in the gutter. I'm so sick of it, I've decided to tell you all what it was really like, ‘cuz I was there, and as the years have shuffled past like so many punks on the way to the rack on stretching day, I've had plenty of time to think about Frank and the good ol’ days. Not that all the days were good, mind you, as you're gonna see, and not that they seem that ol’ either. If I think hard enough, they're just like yesterdays, every one of ‘em. And if I think a bit harder, I can once again hear his footsteps on those cranky wooden stairs and I can smell the morning's first pot of Hurghian coffee like a happy slap up the side of the snout. This is for you, Frankie. I miss you, you son of a ghun. Rhys Somewhere. Sometime. Friends are just enemies you don't know enough about. Old City proverb. Chapter One: Necroview Interviewing murder victims ain't all it's cracked up to be. For one thing, they're very distracted and surprisingly uninterested in vengeance—most of the time. They're much more interested in stuff like telling you what the afterlife's really like and making sure someone's fed their cat. For another thing, three priests gotta be there and their whole purpose for being there is to stop the murder victim from revealing anything about the afterlife. Article Five, paragraph four, subsection seven “a” of the Citied Council Necromantic-Watch Investigative Charter reads: And if said shade shall begin to reveal secrets of the hereafter duly appointed officers of the faiths present find possibly disharmonious to their congregations and/or the general211 population, then said necroview shall be immediately terminated and all words struck212 from the written record, not to be seen by naked213 eye. Further summoning of this shade is not permissible. Priests have a vested interest in making sure the rest of us saps are kept guessing about the afterlife. Hey, I got no beef with ‘em. If we all wised up, they'd be out of a well paid, respectable crust with no heavy lifting, heaps of holidays and the odd sacrificial virgin. There are plenty of worse jobs in the City. So there we were, cramped into The Necroview Room of Watchhouse One to listen to Master Lender Adrian Skrew, recently chopped to pieces on the streets of Hightown, the MAD lieutenant and his batman, the necromancer and his cape, the three priests, Frank and me. The Ursors’ Guild wanted Frank there ‘cuz, just like everyone else, they had about as much faith in the Magicrime Analysis Division of the City Watch as I do limbs. And wherever Frank was, I was tucked in his belt, his faithful magic ... blade. So we both got to hear what the first victim of the Hightown Hacker had to say, straight from the cadaver's mouth. "Has someone fed Tinkles?” Skrew's shade hovered above his mangled body. It was black, even through the shimmering gray Manah cloud only the necromancer and I could see—him being a trained magiprofessional, me being innately magical and downright swell. I could see Skrew's eyes, but the rest of him was lost in the mother of all shadows. Now, I'm not implying nothin’ about ursors, like their souls are black and they're all damned to the foulest pit in the lowest plane of hell (I'm sure the hells are sick to death of the mean bastards), but that's how all shades look. Dark, shadowy, mysterious. The necromancers do it on purpose. I hate necromancers. "Tinkles is fine, Mr Skrew. Tinkles is well cared for, I just need to ask you...” Lieutenant Reginald Hoggwash loosened the tie around his fat neck and bit his fat lip. He was out of his depth, and that's flat, but in true MAD style, he wasn't letting it stop him. He was wading right in with concrete boots. "It's just that if he doesn't get his afternoon mackerel, by jinkees, he gets moody. Only last week..." "We're on to that, Mr Skrew, now..." "It's amazing the things you see here, the things you feel.” Skrew's shade shivered and shook and tore down the middle for the blink of an eye, then pulled back together. “I've gone beyond the borders...” The Friar from the Order of the Worship of the Ecclesiastical Three Toed Fish, the Bishop from the Order of the Fifth and Only Righteous Path to Complete and Utter Salvation (Third On The Right—You Can't Miss It) and the Imahm from the Order of the Light Behind the Softly Erotic Curtain all shifted nervously in their seats. The duly appointed officers of the faiths looked ready to pull the pin. The slightest specific reference to the afterlife, and that would be that. "Who killed you?” Frank asked. When he needed it, he could summon some power in his voice though, for the most part, he was the most softly spoken bull minotaur you'd ever meet. The dank air in The Necroview Room went stale and everybody stopped breathing. It was a pathos moment, and the necromancer, a City elf named Sadly Sadly Saunders, smiled. They love that sort of crap. Skrew's shade wriggled, like he was smoke in a breeze, and Sadly almost lost him. I saw the flash of Manah he burned to pull the guy back together. It was thick dark blue with a jet of crimson through it. Hard edged. Powerful stuff. Sadly knew his dope. "I can ... mmggmgmg mggmmmghhhmm ... you know ... mmmghgmmmgh." "Can't you ... you turn him up? I can't hear a word he's saying.” Hoggwash's bright red face was sweating like a bruised fig on a barbecue plate. "This is not some seaside children's attraction, Lieutenant,” Sadly shot back. He flicked back his blow-waved blonde hair. “The ways of necromancy are plotted far beyond the ken of mortal ... ken." "Spare me the lecture, stiffie stool, just ... ah, I dunno. Skrew! Who damn well killed you and speak the hell up!" "Hell?” The word echoed around the room and I almost choked on the pathos. Skrew's shade spun around like a miniature tornado and Sadly almost lost him for good. He dug deep and managed to weave a holding pattern around the escaping Manah, but it wasn't gonna last. The voice was more muffled and distant. “I cannot tell you the mmmgghh mmmmghgg mm mm mmmmmghhh. It was mmmgh mgh mmun mmennnnmmmb." "What did he say?” Hoggwash squealed, his notebook ready. “Was that ‘one leg'?" "I though he said ‘wrong head',” the Friar offered, scratching his bald spot. "No, it was definitely ‘bun red',” said the Bishop with great passion. “An obvious reference to the holy crimson bagel.” His face beamed with righteous zeal, kind of like an angry boil ready to bust. "No! No!” the Imahm shouted. “He said ‘done bed', a section of a passage from the Holey Wholly Holy Book of Ribald Wisdom that refers to the post-lovemaking commandments of the Apostle Big George where He clearly states that..." "Article Five! Article Five!” The Friar shouted. “I declare this summoning at an end under Article Five!” The Friar was pissed he hadn't thought of trying to fit the mumbled words into some sort of religious jib. In a flash, Skrew was gone, back to whichever hell that housed him, and Sadly was packing his tools into a black attaché case. The three duly appointed officers of the faiths left the room squabbling and bickering like a tribe of goblins at a fresh scrap heap. Hoggwash looked happy with himself. He straightened his crumpled gray suit, made from the cheapest Daktarrian wool (and already starting to pill), and motioned to his batman, Kris. Kris was a little punk, half fey and always trying to make out like he was some sort of wise elvish scribe instead of a jumped-up City Watch go-fer. That's the trouble with the half fey, or, if you prefer, half elves. The only thing City elves have going for ‘em is a certain style, a kind of refined panache, b...
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