Technomancer (Unspeakable Things: Book One)

going to change my mind. She gave me a sudden, hard kiss on the lips. I smiled.
    “Thanks for coming to get me,” she said. “If you live, I’ll owe you a big one.”
    I paused for a moment, wondering what “a big one” might be.
    “Give me your cell,” she demanded, holding out her hand.
    I shrugged and handed it over. She could call a cab if she had to.
    We parted ways and I went back to the big house at the end of the darkest street in the neighborhood. I watched the yard with my gun in my hand until I was sure no one was around. Then I walked up to the front door and opened it. The lock gave way without a problem.
    I smiled to myself, thinking of Holly’s kiss and how I was beginning to like locks. They gave the opposition a false sense of security. As far as I was concerned, the entire world should lock up and go for a long trip. It would make my life easier.
    The cut-up meats were mostly gone now from the kitchen. There were, however, some fresh bloodstains at the cellar door. I heard voices from below. They weren’t arguing or singing, now. They were chanting—speaking words inunison. I headed down the steps, trying to remember which ones creaked the loudest.
    Quand il jette en dansant son bruit vif et moqueur,
    Ce monde rayonnant de métal et de pierre
    The words sounded like French to me. I didn’t understand all of it, but I must have taken a French class at some point, because I picked out something about dancing, stone, and metal. I crept down three steps more. I could feel the sweat sprout from my body.
    There they were: I could see them kneeling in a circle around a shimmer in the air. The rip was almost gone. Could they have created it by themselves? Was that even possible? Were these cultists—of all the cultists in the vast world—the only ones truly capable of functioning witchcraft?
    I reached the sixth step down, and I bent slowly to slip my hand under the wooden plank I stood upon. At first, I couldn’t find what I was looking for. I squatted and reached deeper. My fingers touched the bottle. McKesson had always been very thorough, but this was one detail he’d missed. I’d not bothered to explain it to Holly, but I’d come back for the Gray Man’s dead finger. I wanted hard evidence. If I took this finger to the right people, I knew they would have to take notice. Or, at the very least, it could give me a bargaining chip with McKesson.
    Et pour la déranger du rocher de cristal
    Où, calme et solitaire, elle s’était assise.
    Something about loneliness and rock crystals. On my haunches with the bottle in my hand, I was better able to see the cultists. There were eight of them, both men andwomen. They weren’t wearing any special robes or anything like that. They had on normal clothing, but they were all sitting around the shimmering rip in the air with their heads bowed. One man had a leather-bound book in his lap and seemed to be leading the prayer, or chant, or spell—whatever it was. None of them had weapons in their hands.
    Then I noticed the blood in their midst. There was a lot of it, and it all pooled up underneath the rip they had encircled. The cellar was gently sloped to that point, where as I recalled there had been a drain before. Now the drain was covered, preventing the blood from escaping. It certainly did look as if they had summoned the rip that shivered and twisted.
    It was right about then that I dropped the finger. I don’t have a reason why it happened. I just tipped the bottle a little too far and it fell right out and thumped down the steps one at a time to roll out onto the floor of the cellar.
    I wouldn’t have thought a finger could make all that much noise, but this one did. To me, it sounded like a stone dropped into a quiet well—over and over again as it struck each step.
    I’m not sure who was more surprised, me or the cultists.

I trained my gun on the group. Their looks of surprise changed to glares. I walked down the steps with as much swagger as I could muster. Thinking fast, I came up with a lie and ran with it. It wasn’t great, but it was all I had.
    “All right,” I said. “That’s about enough chanting, people. Do you know this house is bank-owned? You are all trespassing and my partner is walking the rest of the uniforms in here right now.”
    The cultists, getting over their initial shock, stopped looking at me when their leader spoke up. At that point, every one of their eyes fixed upon him.
    The leader looked at the