Technomancer (Unspeakable Things: Book One)

my pants are burning off.”
    “First, let me give you a pointer,” he said, sounding like a veteran talking to a rookie.
    I stared at him, wondering why he wasn’t hauling me to my feet. Vaguely, I wondered who in this day and age still wore cufflinks on a regular basis. Maybe that was another of his objects. I didn’t know. McKesson was so full of crap, even if he told me everything, I could never be sure what parts he had invented.
    “See this ash?” he asked me. “This shit is valuable—sometimes. Dig in it like this.”
    He demonstrated by kicking at a large hump of ash. “You want to find a good hard spot down in one of the craters. It has to be close to the lava, see? But not too close. Sometimes a big nodule of ash really delivers.”
    I had no idea what he was talking about, but I watched because I had no choice. McKesson kicked at a blackenedlump five or six times until it split open. A mass of crystalline chips sprayed out.
    “Now usually, you get crap. Quartz, ebony, glass. But sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes, you get emeralds, peridots, diamonds. Really, it’s hard to tell until you take a mess of these to a jeweler.”
    “Man,” I said, teeth clenched in pain. “I really appreciate this, but I’d appreciate a trip home even more.”
    McKesson chuckled. “Yeah. You wouldn’t want to get trapped here. See that slug out there in the pool? He’s out in the lava now, but you can tell he’s coming. He’s smelled you, or something. They sense flesh and blood. They are quicker in the lava, aren’t they? Not like on land. Heat makes them move faster.”
    I craned my neck and stared out into the crater. I couldn’t help it.
    McKesson squatted nearby. He put out his hand.
    “What now?”
    “Give me the clock.”
    I looked at him, hating him. I put the clock in his hand. I found that, just as Rostok had said, I didn’t want to keep the thing. How often did I need to destroy a town?
    McKesson palmed the alarm clock and pointed at the monster in the lava. “See him?” he asked, his voice husky and urgent. “Right there, about a dozen yards out. That hump isn’t a normal bubble. Normal bubbles don’t swim in one direction like a cockroach under a napkin.”
    Did McKesson want to make me rich, save me, torment me, or was he just having fun? I couldn’t tell. But I did see the hump in the lava, and it was definitely swimming my way. I wished I wasn’t out of ammo—I would have drawn my gun on the detective and ordered him to drag me out of here.
    But when I looked back toward McKesson, he was gone. A rip stood in his place. I dragged myself uphill by my elbows, sending up plumes of hot ash. I cursed the day McKesson had been whelped by an inhuman mother. I understood now that he’d wanted me to experience a little pain and fear, because I’d once done the same to him. But he’d made me rich as well. As I passed the broken nodule of black ash on my way to the rip, I scooped up the gemstones that had spilled out. I shoved them in my pockets, where they burned against my thighs and stomach. After all, who knew how long it would be before I returned here? I wasn’t the kind of man who passed up easy money.

It was nearly two months later when we officially closed the case of the Gray Men. Their murderous rampage had ended—for now. Most parties speculated that the structure of oily pipes we’d blown up had been some kind of a power source. Maybe the monster I’d released in the midst of the building had done the trick. In any case, the machine that allowed them to open rips into our world seemed to have been rendered inoperable.
    In truth, we really weren’t sure why the raids ended. Maybe it was the shock of being counterattacked successfully. Maybe the Gray Men had their own regiment of government accountants and budget jockeys running their daily lives, just as we did. When the costs grew too high, the risks too great, perhaps someone on their side pulled the plug on the project. Whatever the reason, they had stopped coming, and I received the majority of the credit for stopping them.
    Jenna drove out to see me soon after I picked up the keys to my new home. She was impressed, as she’d never seen the mini-mansion before. Standing in the golden afternoon light on the north terrace, the view was breathtaking. We looked down together over a yard full of freshly planted palm trees. Downtown Las Vegas sprawled in the distance, filling the flatlands encircled by stark moonscape