Beneath the gleaming skyscrapers and picturesque facade of the City of Redemption lies another city; a community of dark and ancient magic populated by creatures of the night. Strephon Bellman, a semi-immortal half-fae, has been charged by the Queen of the Fae with investigating Melchior Dusk, a fae noble posing as the mortal owner of a computer game company.
This investigation has been complicated by Cassandra True, a curious reporter to whom Strephon finds himself increasingly drawn...
Dark Redemption is an Urban Gothic Fantasy which will be running in weekly installments Wednesday evenings. Previous installments can be found linked at the Dark Redemption Index.
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Chapter 13: Angels of Mercy
In which Miss True finds more questions than answers
A door opened and a woman in a nurse's uniform entered the room. She pushed a cart up to Strephon's bed with a cheery smile. "Good day, Mister Bellman! And how are we today?"
Strephon sat up in bed. He was in a hospital room. Had he been admitted to a hospital? "What's going on?"
"It's time for your sponge bath," the nurse replied in a soothing voice. She looked familiar. She pulled off his nightshirt, dipped a large bath sponge in a basin of water and began methodically wiping his chest. The water felt warm and pleasant.
"Cassandra," Strephon said, suddenly recognizing her. "You never told me you were a nurse."
"Shhh... Now for the legs.
Before he could stop her, Cassandra pulled back the covers, revealing Strephon's mortal half: ancient and withered legs with bony arthritic joints; wasted away after a century and a half of mortality. Without a word she gently applied the sponge to his gnarled limbs. At the touch of the delightfully warm water the pain of his stiff joints faded and his wrinkled skin grew young and smooth. He could feel his muscles regain their strength. Despite himself, Strephon gave a happy sigh and lolled his head over to one side.
That's when he saw the bunnies.
The walls of his room had gone and they were surrounded by a wooded glade. Rabbits were cautiously stepping out of the bushes. They wore camo trousers and carried automatic weapons but they were unmistakably rabbits.
"The rabbits are watching," he said. For some reason that bothered him more than their paramilitary dress or their iridescent feathery wings.
"I'll take care of that." Cassandra climbed on top of the bed and reached up to the bed curtains hanging from the ceiling. She pulled the curtain around the bed, completely enclosing them.
"Ah. I think this has gone quite far enough," Strephon said. Cassandra was quite close to him, and peeking out from underneath her uniform he could see the the turquoise swimsuit she had worn on the beach the other night.
"Only your legs are crippled," she said quietly, "not your heart."
She bent down and brought her lips close to his. "You don't have to do anything you don't want to, you know."
Then she kissed him.
Strephon knew he needed to do something. He couldn't think what. As he wondered, his arms encircled Cassandra's waist and drew her body close to his. That was all that mattered.
* * * * *
Cassandra woke up. She blinked, then rubbed her eyes.
"My, what a peculiar dream…
* * * * *
By the next morning, Cassandra had pushed aside her odd dreams and concentrated on her piece on Melchior. She had finally given up on trying to fit her experience in the virtual reality game into the profile and decided to write two stories: the light, friendly profile her editor assigned her to write, and the expose of cyber-technology gone horrifically wrong. She sweated out a first draft of both before going to bed, but now she wanted to look over them with a fresh eye, searching for errors her perfidious spell-checker might have overlooked as she juggled a cup of coffee and tried to avoid dropping muffin crumbs on her keyboard.
Her editor, Mr. Potts, very well might go for the Trapped In Virtual Reality story. It had the kind of sensationalistic vibe that appealed to him. But he would insist on some concrete facts -- or at least some good quotes -- and for this story facts seemed as slippery and hard to nail down as… well, as Dusk himself to be honest. If only she’d had the presence of mind to question some of Dusk’s staff at the party, or one of the paramedics before they spirited Byron away. “It’s hard to be objective when you’re the one being chased by zombies,” she muttered to herself.
“Who’s being chased by zombies?” Cassandra’s flatmate, Cecily came buzzing into the kitchen and poured herself a cup of coffee.
“Never mind.”
“How was that party last night? Did you and your Steven fellow have a good time?”
“It’s Strephon,” Cassandra corrected. “And I’ll tell you later.”
“First werewolves, then zombies. He must be an interesting guy.”
“It’s not like that.” Cassandra frowned some more at her laptop screen. She made up her mind. She called up the hospital’s website to look up its visiting hours, and then the city bus schedule.
The nurse at the hospital’s receiving desk was delighted when Cassandra asked to see Mr. Sanders. “Are you a member of his family?” she asked.
“No, just a friend.”
The nurse’s face fell. “Well… maybe you could still help.” It seemed that none of the staff on duty the night before had seen the ambulance bring Byron in. He just was suddenly there, in one of the empty rooms, lying in a bed and hooked up to an I.V. How he got there, no one could say; but no admissions papers had been filled out for him other than a brief note on a clipboard by his bed giving his name, a preliminary diagnosis of “Idiopathic Caput Asinus Syndrome” and signed with an illegible scrawl. “Do you know anything about Mr. Sanders’s medical history?”
Cassandra could not help her there. “I don’t even know what an idiopathic whatever is.”
“It’s gibberish,” the nurse said crossly. “I think someone’s playing a joke on us.”
Cassandra agreed that the joke was in poor taste and eventually persuaded the nurse to let her see their mystery patient.
Byron was sitting up in bed when Cassandra entered his room, and he seemed well enough, except that he didn’t seem to recognize her. “Do I know you?” he asked.
“I’m Cassandra True. I spoke with you at Melchior Dusk’s party last night.”
Byron fell back on his pillows and moaned. “I don’t remember anything about last night. I keep telling them that. Oh God, I didn’t get drunk and ask you to play Virtual Hot Tub, did I?”
“No… you were showing me a virtual reality game and something went wrong and we were being attacked by orcs and we couldn’t get out.”
“That doesn’t sound like Virtual Hot Tub.”
“No, it was something different.”
“You know, I designed the original Virtual Hot Tub.”
“Yes. You told me. You also said you wanted to tell me something important, and you took me into a game so that we could speak privately.”
Byron shook his head. “I wouldn’t have taken you into Nowyr 2 Run for that. I would have chosen something more peaceful, like Feather Bunnies.”
Now it was Cassandra’s turn to frown. There had been feather bunnies in last night’s dream. Had it been a fragment of memory? Back to the subject. “I think you were trying to tell me something about Melchior Dusk.”
“Melchior…?” Byron’s head perked up and his tone of voice audibly brightened. “Melchior Dusk is a brilliant entrepreneur who is creating a quantum level revolution in computer gaming.” Then his voice and his manner dropped back to it’s semi-puzzled state. “What would I want to say about Dusk?”
A chill stole over Cassandra. She had come across that “brilliant entrepreneur” phrase verbatim in a promotional flyer she had picked up in the Vanir Technologies lobby just a few days ago. She had even cribbed it in her profile. Hearing it come out of Byron’s lips, not as earnest praise or even as a sarcastic quote, but almost like an unconscious reflex, only deepened her sense of unease.
“God, I hope Dusk doesn’t fire me,” Byron continued morosely. “The police have been here asking questions and if the company has any problems over this, you know I’ll get the blame.”
Cassandra assured him that things would undoubtedly work out, and reminded him that he was the creator of the original Virtual Hot Tub and still had plenty of career options ahead of him. But she felt no closer to finding any really useful information about Vanir Technologies
She did manage to get from Byron the names of some of his co-workers, and after leaving the hospital she tried calling them. A few of them, the long-time employees from before Dusk bought the company, were guarded in their responses. Others were more enthusiastic about the company. Each of the chipper ones mentioned the “quantum level revolution” like it was a company mantra.
Cassandra also called Detective Masey, who seemed in a particularly foul mood. He nearly bit her head off when he answered his phone, although he collected himself and gruffly apologized for his rudeness. “I wanted to ask you some questions too,” he said, “only your fairy godmother, Bellman, spirited you away last night before I got a chance.” That was a curious turn of phrase. Unfortunately, Cassandra could not remember many of the details Masey wanted, and the detective had little he could officially share with her.
“Are you planning on pressing charges?” Masey asked.
“Charges?”
“You could probably make a decent case for criminal negligence with that VR game.”
Cassandra hadn’t considered it from that angle. She felt a great reluctance to pursue the matter legally. It would likely cause more trouble for Byron, and she couldn’t help but feel that he was the real victim in this case. “I’ll think about it.”
“Because frankly, unless we get a criminal complaint, I don’t think there’s much we can do. Dusk is more than happy to sweep the whole thing under the carpet, and the Sanders kid is too scared to say ‘boo’. Are you sure?”
“I’ll talk to my solicitor,” Cassandra said. She didn’t have a solicitor, but it seemed the right thing to say. Come to think of it, she recalled Strephon mentioning something about practicing law; perhaps he could advise her. “Thank you.”
She still had an hour to go before noon, when she had promised to have her story on Potts’ desk, and she had little more material than she had the night before. She remembered the odd comment Strephon had made about how stories were meant to be told but secrets meant to be kept. “I have a story here, but it seems determined to remain a secret.” In the end, she decided to submit both stories, the Melchior piece and the one about Byron and the game, and see what Potts said.
To Cassandra’s surprise, her editor was pleased. “Good job on the Dusk profile. Engaging and evocative. Gives a real feel for the subject. We’ll run it in tomorrow’s edition. As for the killer game story…” he called up the story on his monitor and tapped the screen, “It has possibilities. Dusk’s Virtual Reality platform is going to be a big thing. Any time something like that becomes big, someone like Lukas Bianka or some other God-botherer is going to come crawling out of their pulpits to call it satanic. It generates controversy, and controversy always sells papers. But as it is, your story’s a little thin. It needs more corroborative detail. It needs a hook.”
“I know,” Cassandra sighed.
“Play up the mystery. How did the killer game get on Sanders’ machine? And how did the kid get to the hospital without any trace of his arrival? That’s the angle to take.”
“Please don’t tell me you want to suggest Space Aliens.”
Potts snapped his fingers. “Not aliens. Angels! It was a miracle! Play up that angle. See if you can get somebody on the record saying it was Divine Providence. If we can get the Holy Rollers arguing with each other, that will sell even more papers!”
Cassandra sighed. Well, at least she got one story approved. She steeled herself for another round of phone calls.
“Oh, and True?” Potts called out as she was about to leave his office. “See if you can dig out a Sexy Nurse pic from the Page Three file and have Production put some wings and a halo on her.”
Cassandra could not leave the Oracle soon enough.
NEXT: A Chat With Miss Cooper