Devona told Lazlo and I followed up by ordering him to step on it.
I immediately regretted my words as the cab shot forward as if suddenly rocket propelled. Devona lost her grip on me and I tumbled to the floor and bounced around a bit before she managed to get hold of me again and settle me back onto her lap. The severed head routine, to use a metaphor that technically didn't apply at that moment, was becoming a real pain in the ass.
Devona kept a close eye on the tooth compass and called out course corrections to Lazlo as he drove. Fifteen minutes and uncountable traffic violations later we found ourselves at the edge of the Sprawl, close to its border with the Wyldwood, the Dominion of the lykes. The businesses there tend to cater toward their shapeshifter neighbors, mostly restaurants that served hunks of raw meat and mugs of blood – few self-respecting lykes would go near a glass of aqua sanguis. They'd rather drink animal blood just as long as it was the real thing. Devona instructed Lazlo to pull up to a rundown shack of a restaurant called Tooth and Claw. He parked in front of the establishment, earning wrinkled noses and low throated growls of disapproval from a group of lykes on the sidewalk. But the cab just growled right back and the lykes suddenly remembered a pressing engagement elsewhere and departed.
"Keep the motor running, Lazlo," Devona said.
"No problem. Holler if you need help, though."
I promised we would, then Devona opened the door and, holding me tucked beneath her arm, climbed out of the cab. In her other hand she held the tooth compass and she kept her gaze fixed on it as she stepped onto the sidewalk.
"You think the restaurant owner stole my body because their scavenger customers have been craving filet of zombie?"
I was joking – mostly. But lykes came in all types, not just the typical werewolf kind. Werehyenas, werevultures… there were any number of lykes who preferred decayed meat to fresh.
"Let's hope not," Devona said, not taking her eyes off the compass. "Otherwise, while we might be able to get the bulk of your body back, we'll have to wait a while, and I don't think you'll appreciate the state it's in once we recover it."
"I didn't realize you possessed a crude streak, Ms. Kanti."
"Must be the bad influence of the company I've been keeping lately, Mr. Richter." She paused. "Bad news. The compass is pointing directly at the restaurant. Should we go in?"
I thought about it. Without my body I didn't have my jacket and that meant I didn't have any of the various toys I carry around for dealing with occasional annoyances, like a restaurant filled with territorial lykes who would be less than thrilled to have a half-vampire carrying a zombie head enter their establishment. Most lykes can't stand the smell of undead flesh, zombies in particular, so neither of us would receive a warm welcome if we went inside.
"Let's go around the back," I suggested. "Maybe we'll find a way to sneak in."
In lyke culture the strongest predators have the highest status and the lower ranking predators, along with the herbivores, serve them. So the kitchen staff would be composed of lower caste lykes, which meant they'd be easier to deal with than the alphas dining at the Tooth and Claw. At least, that's what I hoped.
Devona carried me down an alley alongside the ramshackle building. I had a few bad moments when we passed a group of carrion imps sifting through a pile of trash – I'll never look at the little bastards the same way again – but otherwise we made it to the other side of the alley without any trouble.
The rear of the Tooth and Claw looked like the back of any other restaurant: Dumpster alongside the aisle wall, back entrance lit by a single light overhead, a metal bucket lying on the ground next to the door to collect cigarette butts and gnawed clean bones left by staff during breaks.
I was trying to come up with some kind of story that we could use to tell the kitchen staff to get them to let us in and take a look around when Devona stopped walking.
"Uh, Matt? The tooth isn't pointing to the restaurant any more. It's pointing to the Dumpster."
I wondered then if my earlier joke hadn't proved prophetic, if maybe some lyke chef had carved the dead meat from my bones for his scavenger customers and then tossed my bones into the Dumpster. After all, the tooth compass was designed to locate my body – or what was left of it. There was no guarantee what state my body would be in when we found it.
The Dumpster lid was down, and fearing the worst, I told Devona to open it. She tucked the compass into a back pocket – though considering how tight her leather pants were, I have no idea how she managed to do it – and then reached up with her free hand, gripped the Dumpster lid, and threw it open. As short as she is she couldn't see into the Dumpster, so she gripped my hair and held me up as high as she could so I could take a look. There, lying atop a mound of animal bones and bloody rags, lay my body. The arms and legs were askew but they didn't appear to be broken and aside from the wound on my neck where my head had been attached, my body looked none the worse for our time apart.
My body wasn't the only thing in the Dumpster, though. Standing on my chest was a single carrion imp. The tiny creature ignored me as he cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, "Hey, guys! You're not going to believe what I found!"
"Call Lazlo," I told Devona. "We need to get the rest of me out of there, pronto."
Devona shouted Lazlo's name and at the same time a pack of eager carrion imps came racing out of the alley.
I hoped Lazlo was a fast runner.
FIVE
Devona and Lazlo managed to get my body into the back seat of the cab and then we all climbed in. Devona gave my body a quick examination and confirmed that it hadn't suffered any significant damage. We also learned that whoever had stolen my body hadn't removed any of the tricks I carried in the pockets of my suit jacket and he or she had left my 9mm in the shoulder holster.
Lazlo pulled away from the Tooth and Claw and Devona took out her handvox, called Papa Chatha, and then held the device to my face so I could talk with him. Handvoxes are the Nekropolis version of cell phones and they're yet another patented Victor Baron creation. They're made of flesh with an ear for you to speak into and a mouth that relays the voice of the person on the other end. If you hold a vox too close to your own ear you can sometimes feel the moving lips of the mouth against your skin, a sensation that, despite my dead nerve endings, never fails to make me a little queasy. Because of this, and so Devona could hear as well, I asked her to put Papa on speaker phone.
I quickly filled Papa in on what had happened since we left, and while Lazlo drove around this section of the Sprawl, Papa told me he'd been doing some more thinking about my situation.
"You know I'll do anything in my power to help you, Matt. You're not just one of my best customers, you're also my friend. But – and this is no false modesty on my part – while I can sew back on an ear or finger, even reattach an arm, there's no way in the Nine Hells that I'll be able to successfully reattach your head. You may be dead, but your nervous system still functions in its own fashion. I simply do not possess the necessary knowledge and skill to repair all the required connections between your brain and body. I'm sorry."
Papa went on before I could reply.
"Something else you need to be aware of is that an injury of this magnitude has severely damaged the integrity of your preservative spells. You'll need to get them reapplied as soon as possible. The longer your two… er, pieces remain separate, the more decay you'll experience. I can cast preservative spells on your head and body separately, but doing so will make it more difficult to rejoin them. It's hard to explain, but basically, by treating your two halves as separate objects, I'll be making them separate. So if at all possible, it would be better to wait until your head and body are reconnected before I apply any new preservative spells. No more than a couple days. Otherwise…"