The Liminal People Read online

  “Then what the fuck do I need you for?”

  “You can’t see her. You don’t know what she looks like!”

  “Forgot so soon about the girl whose mother and father you killed? She knows what your lady’s face is all about. Again, I don’t need you.”

  “No! She doesn’t!” Problem. I’m thinking. “No one does.”

  “Prentis, the dog girl. She knows.” I hate the level of questioning in my voice.

  “No, she doesn’t! Alia wouldn’t trust her to take out the garbage, let alone with her real face. She doesn’t trust anyone.”

  “But she trusts you? You’re muscle, not confidant. You’re overplaying your hand, ’jeshi.”

  “No! Don’t kill me.” I’m not even trying to make him cry. “I wasn’t supposed to see. She sleeps alone ’cause she can’t maintain the illusion when she’s asleep. I had to deliver some money to her one time. I guess she was tired. She was sleeping in her living room. I saw her! I saw her!”

  “So you woke her up and she let you live? Bullshit!”

  “I snuck out!” he screams. His nerve endings begin to grow out of his fingers. I’m fucking with his insides like a vicar on a whore. “I snuck out. I knew she’d kill me. I snuck out. I knocked on the door hard when I came back. I swear. She looked different then. Like she always does. I swear I saw her.”

  “So here’s a question, boom boy. And take your time answering . . . it’s your only reprieve from drowning in your own waste. All this girl does is make illusions. Images you know aren’t real. Meanwhile, you blow things up. Plus, she’s a woman, and we both know how you really feel about women. So how is it you end up taking orders from this Alia chick?”

  “Fuck you, you arrogant prick.”

  “Ah, see, now you’re tasting your own mucus and blood again. Keep it civil and I’ll give you a decent death,” I lie. “Now answer my question.”

  “You’ve never met her.” Is that a laugh through the grimace of pain? I have to hold back from sending multiple blood clots to his brain. “It’s not images, it’s not illusions. When she’s got you in her grip, when she holds your brain it’s not illusions . . . it’s reality. I’ve seen her put a guy in fire and watched his skin boil. Her imaginary swords draw blood. Fuck, the only way I know you’re not her is I just left her. She runs everything around her. She’s like her own planet, complete with her own gravity. . . .”

  “So why does she want me so bad?” I’ve been so focused on my torture thing that I didn’t feel Tamara come in. Her steps are delayed, like she’s approaching a wounded animal. I want to reach out to her, tell her there’s nothing to worry about. That I’ve got her. But she gets stronger with each step, and I realize it’s not my place.

  “Why? Why all this killing and intimidation? What makes me so special?”

  I can tell he wants to say something dirty and nasty. But his bloodshot eyes look at mine and see what I want. He speaks plainly.

  “She thinks that with you, she’d actually be able to do all the things she makes people think. She calls you her retarded sister. . . .” Tamara spits at the idea. “She says you were meant to work together. That’s why she was so angry when you turned her down. She took it personal. I’m nothing to her. Prentis, less than nothing. But you . . . your parents were in the way. That’s all. The way she said it, she said it like no one would notice. No one would care.”

  “I care.” She’s trembling with rage. Everything around us begins to tremble as well. Her telekinesis is fusing with her emotional state. I almost let my focus slip when I imagine the possibilities of that. “What about Prentis?”

  “What about her? You’ve seen Alia with her. She does whatever Alia says. The only time Alia lets her do or say anything is when she wants to make fun of her or put her down.”

  “And you and Prentis?” I have to ask. He gives me another look, shakes his head vigorously. He knows what’s coming. To push him along I twist his calf so tightly it begins to atrophy.

  “Oh God! Yes, I did it. Alia gave her to me.”

  “Gave her to you?” Tamara’s shaking had stopped for a moment, only to start up again when Rajesh spoke. “How are you given another human being?”

  “You don’t understand! Neither one of you pricks understands. When you’re around Alia, she can give you whatever you want. She looks in your mind, and your best desire, or your worst fear, that’s what she can offer you. I wanted women, lots of them. I didn’t know if she was making me look different, or them look different. Or if I was with anyone at all. It could’ve all been in my head. The first few times I had Prentis, she made me think that she was her, that Prentis was Alia. I didn’t . . . I didn’t know.”

  “He’s lying!” Tamara shouts loud enough in his mind to reverberate through his body. “He knew Alia wouldn’t sleep with him. He resented that she was trying to pass off Prentis as her, so . . . oh my God, you vulgar fucking creature, you . . . raped her until she bled, and you liked it.”

  “Get out of here now, Tamara.” She looks at me harshly. I can’t return it. Hang around Nordeen long enough you’ll meet some sport rapists. The type that makes this pool of physical and mental sickness at my feet seem like a romantic. To keep the peace, I’ve had to sit through more than a few of their glory-day stories as they tried to convince my boss to switch from hash trading to bonded child chattel, to slavery. If he did take it on, Nordeen was smart enough to keep it from me. Maybe he caught wind of my emotions when they spoke. At least I had the filter of words. Tamara just experienced the situation from the rapist’s perspective. Even disheveled and powerless, this fucker is toxic.

  “I can’t have you doing my killings for me.” She’s trying to use logic as the whole building around us shakes with her rage.

  “You’re mad right now. You think taking this asshole out will make you feel better. It won’t. Only thing that’ll make you feel remotely sane again is knowing that what happened to you won’t happen to someone else. That’s not him, that’s the queen bitch, Alia. You take this sap out, you’ll be questioning yourself all your tomorrows.” Truth is, I can’t stop her if she’s committed. So I think of offering praise to Samantha’s cult god when the building stops shaking. She looks at me, nods, and leaves.

  “Please, I helped, yeah? I told you everything, right? Don’t be a bastard, come on, help a guy out. I was confused yeah? Didn’t know what was going on, for real. I’ll change.” I can barely understand him through his crying.

  “Shh, relax. This isn’t going to hurt.” I start flooding his brain with heroin levels of dopamine. “I’m going to heal you now.” And I do. His entire body. From the hurts I’ve imposed to every hereditary defect that would’ve caused even an ounce of pain in his late eighties. I turn him into an ultimate specimen of humanity, of liminal humanity even. He can’t believe his luck. Then he sees me smile.

  I start again by exploding every one of his taste buds. I burn his liver and intestines with lactic acid, turn his stomach into a Swiss cheese–like membrane and fill it with the remains of his bone marrow. Just before I increase the pressure in his eye sockets until vision becomes unbearable, I dry out his eardrum, making balance an impossible notion. I regrow the bone spikes from his neck, legs, and arms almost as an afterthought. By the time I’m finished with him, he uses his last remaining power to explode his own head.

  I walk from the restaurant to the early evening. Across the way, Tamara sits sobbing on the bench where I left her. Fourteen years old. I hadn’t done this much at her age. Mac ran the town, really just the high school, but that was it. He held court over all the local teenagers and the poor teachers associated with the school, but there were no global conspiracies, no murder of parents to get what he wanted. And all I did was follow behind him, tending to every bump and scrape that he might have. I wouldn’t have been able to handle what this girl is facing.

  “It’s over,” I tell her, petting her hair.

  “I want you to know.” She moves my hand only so that she can l
ook in my eyes. “I don’t think of you as my dog. My killer. I know what my responsibility is. When the time comes, I promise I won’t let you down.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m not like them. Alia and Rajesh. I’m not hard like them. But I’m no Prentis, either. I can handle myself.”

  “Better than I could at your age.” She nods, realizing there isn’t a hint of patronization in my voice. “Right then. Let’s get suited up.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Soho has been taken over by samurai. From Chinatown to Covent Gardens to the West End proper, the spirit of feudal Japan has linked up with drum and bass to cause a pagan-like celebration—something London hasn’t seen since the initial explosion of the Jungle scene. All the shops, from the Chinese dumpling palaces to the high-end sex-toy retailers, are participating. Proprietors stand outside their shops asking people to come in for tea. Japan doesn’t have this many kimonos.

  The boundaries of the outdoor party are marked by eight huge video projectors, apparently linked to some camera in the crowd. I didn’t think London could party like this anymore. The music is overwhelming the closer you get to some speakers, but there are some relatively quiet zones as well, where you can have a conversation without shouting. There are very few people in those zones. Five DJ’s compete with varying sound systems for the attention of the crowd. They have mine until I feel the orphan next to me tug my jacket.

  “How the hell are we going to find her in this?” Tamara took good advantage of the theme. She’s painted her face white, with a red dot on each cheek. Nothing on the planet would get her into anything white so soon after her parent’s death, and black would make her look too much like the assassin she’s planning on being. So we decided on a deep blue kimono, and a real sword just in case this plan goes all types of pear-shaped.

  “She’ll find me,” I say, pointing to the video projectors. I stand out because I’m not wearing a kimono. A few others in the crowd aren’t either, but they, too, are marked as different. Either they stumbled into this disorganized co-option of public space, or they’ve just never been to a Bender party. Apparently there’s always a theme involving costuming. Guess it fits the personality of an illusionist. I look down at the girl I’ve held and talked to and worked with for three days. It seems like months. Even with face paint on, she reminds me of her mother. This may be the last time I see either one of them. “Get lost, before we’re spotted together.”

  I’ve trained her well. In a second she’s under the group miasma of the party. Like the ninja she dressed as when we first met, she disappears into the crowd. What’s more, no words. Just action. My turn to do the same.

  I find one of the cameramen. He’s bouncing his little digital camera on the breasts of a girl not much older than Tamara, and I take it from him. I shine it on my face, then the razor around my neck. Then my face again. I toss it back to him. For almost fifteen seconds my features and my master’s calling card were writ large on the big screen. This Alia chick is all about control. I just interrupted the flow of her control for a few seconds. If she’s worth her salt, I’ll be getting a talking-to any second.

  I pull three chicken buns from a local vendor before a big black bruiser taps me on my shoulder. He speaks less with his words than his body, which makes sense as I am in the middle of a roaring crowd bouncing up and down to an old Congo Natty tune. He tells me with his eyes that the lady of the evening wants to have a conversation. One scan and I know him for her Fou-Fou. He’ll come for me with the .380 he has under his jacket if he needs to. But his task is only to bring me to his mistress.

  I keep one of the buns and follow the bruiser as he pushes through crowds of barely post-teen drunkards and tourists with more money than common sense. He leads me to a flight of stairs between two flats, a stairway that shelters five people. All muscular, like my friend behind me. I could take them down in a second. Instead, I play the part and climb the stairs with an arrogance that causes men who outweigh me by a hundred pounds to rethink any moves they might make.

  The steps lead to a huge old flat tarred roof, a rarity in the neighborhood. Thirty people drink, pop pills, and dance on this street-party version of the V.I.P. lounge. Across the street, another roof party. Down the block, another one. It’s really the next level up. Right on the edge of this rooftop, an impossible woman reclines on a chaise lounge with a cigarette installed in an old-school two-foot-long filter. The woman is emaciatedly thin, like an anime character with cartoonish ovals for eyes and cheekbones that extend up to her earlobes. She sports a red dress patterned with dragons. Dragon Lady. I know her to be Alia without my big bodyguard offering a directional hand in her vicinity.

  I allow myself to be guided but then I catch a familiar body in my sensory periphery. As I veer right, the bodyguard tries to stop me. I turn him into a diabetic in desperate need of insulin. Once I’m free of him, I return his pancreas to working order. His insulin will rebound. Or it won’t. Prentis, dressed as a Japanese rice peasant, complete with rice-paddy shoes, torn pants, and blouse, tries to run from me. I give her a leg cramp and continue to walk slowly toward her. It’s only when she stands, lip quivering, I realize I don’t have much hate for her. She did attack me, she was part of all this, but I’m finding some kinship with her. I’m looking in her face, trying to find the opportunist that I saw in Rajesh, the power hunger I expect from Alia, even the misdirected anger of Tamara when we first met. Instead, all I see is her pure, abject terror. And while I know it’s probably Alia’s rage she’s afraid of, the girl is looking at me. What’s more, I know what I’m going to have to do to her later in order to keep Tamara safe. I feel the perversion of my power as I finger her brain. That sense, reinforced by her garb, disgusts me.

  “Run away. Run now and never let me see you again.” When she obeys, I start screaming in my head, “What about Nordeen?” Another problem, another day.

  The Dragon Lady rises briefly from her seat to investigate the commotion, but refocuses on her cigarette as soon as Prentis runs down the stairs. I walk calmly over to her but wait for her to speak.

  “I have it on good authority that you killed my man Rajesh,” she tells me like she read it in the paper next to the sports column. It’s disconcerting talking to a voice you’re not sure has been spoken. Even that could be an illusion.

  “I didn’t come all this way to speak with an illusion,” I state with the same disdain. She turns from overlooking the party and finally meets my eyes.

  “Well, my dear. If you hadn’t have killed one of my soldiers, scared my favorite puppy dog away, and broken one of my norms before even saying hello, you might not have wasted your trip.” She says it in a long, drawn-out posh drawl that doesn’t match her image.

  “Is that the message you want me to convey to Nordeen Maximus?” She turns quickly at my words. I notice the ash she flicks disappears into thin air. It’s all illusion. I’m not talking to the girl, but she’s somewhere close by. Close enough to hear me and have her illusion respond.

  “Anyone can buy a razor,” she says snidely.

  “Yeah, but no one invokes Nordeen’s name without knowing who he is. And you can’t know who he is and try to claim him without intimate knowledge.”

  “Nordeen sent you?” There’s a level of hope in her voice. I nod. Suddenly, the landscape changes. I’m still on a roof, but I’m a lot closer to the edge. The Dragon Lady I was talking to disappears, and where she was is only sky and the gentle updraft of Chinese food and body funk. Two more steps. If I tried to touch the Dragon Lady I would’ve fallen. This Alia girl is good. From behind me another voice, different from the Dragon Lady, continues the conversation. “Then I welcome you as the emissary from one power to another.”

  I turn to face a woman of my height, with flowing black hair and a white Kimono. She walks on shoes with wooden slots at the soles. Her face is small, Middle Eastern, and intense.

  “I didn’t think he’d received my gifts,” she says, sipping on a glass of champ
agne.

  “They were not to his liking,” I reply curtly. Time is running out. She’s made me. Now I need to make her for Tamara.

  “What else could I have offered his petulant highness that would have appeased him?” There’s that put-upon air about her again.

  “What you covet the most. I’m here to take the telekinetic back to my lord. He says any further involvement between you and her will result in war between our two camps.” She puts the glass down, and I’ve figured her out again.

  “That girl is mine. I found her first, she’s in my city—”

  “Yes, your city where you ordered a public execution of a highly political norm because you couldn’t use your sway to convince the girl to come to your side.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “Your muscle doesn’t know how to keep his mouth shut when he’s seizing in agony. And as I said earlier, I did not come all this way to speak with an illusion.” I turn and hit the stairs. The bodyguards know better than to interfere with my progress.

  Some grime jam is making the crowd in this section of the street jerk around like headless chickens. I just keep walking. This is all part of the plan. Alia controls her environment, so I’ve got to get her out of control. Get her questioning and unsure. Get her to drop her own illusions. Just once. Can’t risk using my power on her. If it’s not her body, she’ll know I tried to get her and she’ll attack. If I can’t tell what’s real and what’s not, then I’m no use.

  “Wait!” The bark sounds more like a real voice, but it’s way too loud over the music. It’s indicators like this that are the only way I can tell if she’s real or not. The champagne glass on the table didn’t make a sound. Now her voice comes through, though I’m nowhere near a quiet zone. Means she’s projecting into my mind. Still, like a fish on a line, I’ve got to draw her in. So I stop and turn.