The Forever Drug Read Free Page A

she'd plugged into it, stabbing at the keys with two fingers. Her close-cropped hair was hidden by one of the brightly colored patchwork "scrap caps" that were all the rage. She wore baggy white pants and a bright red shirt printed with stylized silhouettes of drummers whose arms moved in time with her heartbeat. Dass liked to tell people it was a magical effect, but it was actually technological; tiny sensors woven into the fabric triggered color changes in the threads, sending the drummers strobing through a series of pre-set poses.
    Dass had been born and raised in the Maritimes, but had traveled extensively in search of her shamanic "heritage," picking up a lot of lore about paranormal creatures along the way. Her family had lived in Halifax for generations, back when this part of the world was still part of Canada. Her great-great-grandparents had been born in Africville, an African-Canadian settlement that was bulldozed in the last century and that now lay buried under Seaview Park. Before that .. . well, Dass really didn't know what part of Africa her ancestors had come from. West Africa was a good guess, since the slave trade had originated there. But she'd found a tradition that spoke to her in East Africa, among the Bantu peoples.
    Dass had originally had another surname—now a closely kept secret known only to Lone Star's administrative personnel department. She'd taken the name Mchawi from the Swahili word for "magician." She actually spoke a little Swahili, and used that language to greet me as she looked up from her work.
    " Salamu , Romulus. I hear you ran into a little trouble earlier this evening."
    I leaned against the door frame. Dass was the only one at Lone Star who called me by my human name—Romulus—which my first set of foster parents had chosen after reading a myth about two boys who were suckled by wolves. The rest of the DPI detectives usually called me "Rover" or "Fido"—two nicknames I detested. Dass was also the only one who always smelled friendly. The other detectives were polite enough, but their smiles never reached their pores.
    "I was hoping you might know what I ran into, Dass," I said. "I've never seen anything like it, and the DPI detective who responded didn't seem to know what it was." I described the creature for her— both its physical and astral appearance.
    "Sounds like a corpselight," Dass said after a moment's thought.
    "The name fits," I observed, "considering the end result."
    She nodded. "Corpselights feed on sentient creatures, draining the life essence from them. They stimulate the pleasure centers of their victims' brains so the poor triggers don't have the willpower to get away— at least they die happy. But a corpselight in Halifax? They prefer desolate areas; the mana pollution in cities is too high."
    "Yet I saw one here, in the city."
    "Yes, you did."
    That's what I like about Dass. She doesn't call my observations into question, the way the other detectives do. She takes them at face value, even when logic seems to contradict them. She also gets right to the point.
    "Did you get the assignment to track and contain it?"
    "Don't know yet," I said. "I'm hoping to talk to the sergeant about it. Is he busy?"
    He must have heard me. "Hey, Romulus!" Sergeant Raymond shouted from down the hall. "We've got another blackberry cat for you. One was spotted aboard a pleasure boat down in the harbor. Think you're up for another chase, boy?"
    I heard laughter from another office. I growled and twitched my lip, revealing my canines. I knew Raymond called me Fido behind my back, but "boy" was his obvious in-your-face insult for me, suggestive of the master-slave relationship some pet owners have with their dogs. When he was really wanting to stick it to me, he'd call me with a whistle. He also liked to crack jokes about "house-training" me.
    As if I'd soil the office by leaving my mark inside. No, it was out on the front steps, where it belonged.
    Dass rolled her eyes in silent