Technomancer (Unspeakable Things: Book One)

bought me a geranium at the gift shop?”
    She looked embarrassed.
    “Thanks for the thought. But I didn’t wake up at Memorial. I woke up in the Sunset Sanatorium under the gentle care of Dr. Meng.”
    I was hoping she would react to that name, but her face was a blank.
    “Maybe they transferred you after patching you up,” she offered.
    At the top of the stairs, she opened the door without any mystical help from me. I followed her inside and accepted a beer while she told me some of her theories about what was happening to the city.
    According to Holly, everyone working on the Strip talked about the decay of the city, wondering about the cause. Some blamed online gambling, or soaring unemployment, or the city’s famously high crime rate. Holly had a less complex answer: in her opinion, the city had “moved on.” It had gone from one century to the next and changed in character as inevitably as people did while they wended their ways through life. She believed a new presence had formed in the midst of the crumbling casinos. Something had replaced the old source of energy and vibrancy. Just as the city had once grown out of the desert sands like a mushroom.
    “The economy has fallen apart in Vegas, just as it has everywhere else,” I said, unwilling to see something more sinister.
    “I think it’s more than that,” she said.
    “We used to have people flowing here, bringing their millions in gambling money,” she said, “but now this new source of energy has brought worse things.”
    I thought about what she was suggesting. That a new kind of life force had come to the city. That this new attraction wasn’t as wholesome as a natural drive toward sex and greed.
    “Sometimes, when enough sinning is done in single place,” she said, “I think it attracts the attention of
bad things
.”
    “What kind of bad things?” I asked her.
    Holly caught the smile I’d tried to suppress and glared at me. “Imagine
you
being the skeptic. You should read your own blog, Draith.”
    “I suppose I should, but tell me what you mean, anyway.”
    She went on to describe a frightening scenario. In her imagination, strange shadows were being drawn to this spot like insects gathering around a flickering bulb at night. This had all started years ago, she believed. There had been stories…small things at first. People disappeared, but that was not unusual, especially in Vegas. Soon, the disappearances had turned into outright murders—weird ones. These weren’t just simple gangland killings—there had always been people beaten to death with baseball bats, shot and left for dead on the Strip, hookers found in garbage cans—no, this was worse than all that. These crimes were…disturbing, unusual, even
bizarre
.
    “It’s almost as if the city is under—I don’t know, some kind of attack, I guess,” she said.
    “From demons, aliens, or evil scientists?”
    “You write about this stuff, and you are making fun of me?”
    “Sorry,” I said.
    We talked on in this vein for another hour. At last we finished our drinks, and I had grown very weary. She let me have the sole bed in the place. She wasn’t tired. She wentout into the living room where she had a computer and spent her time on the web. I heard her moving all around the apartment when the door was closed down to a crack. She was probably hiding cash here and there, squirreling it away so no one intruder could get all of it. As I was passing out, she left, telling me she had a few bills to pay.
    “Take care of yourself,” I slurred.
    She looked surprised, like no one had said that to her in a long time.

I awoke with a start from a dream about a world full of cement walls and shadowy people who resisted illumination despite the harsh glare of fluorescent lights. The shadowy people talked to me, but I could not make out what they were saying.
    It was dark again. I’d slept the entire day away. I got up with a bone-weary groan. I wondered why sleeping for great lengths of time made a man’s body more sore than when he lay down.
    I felt around for the sunglasses, the gun, and the wad of cash. They were all still there. I was happy about that. I’d taken a chance with Holly, and it had paid off. Or maybe she was too happy with all the money I’d helped gather for her to rob me right off. But I knew her kind. If she ever ran out of cash, that was when she would become dangerous.
    After a quick shower and shampoo, which left me smelling overpoweringly fruity,