Excerpt

Cam took stock of their surroundings. They were in the neighbourhood known as Laundry Alley. Hundreds of flats taken over by families with more children than they had shoes for, scores of the little things running and screaming from one side of the road to the other. Lines upon lines of washing hung from window to window. Sister Ramona glanced to the back of the vehicle, some of the more daring inhabitants already scaling the rear bumper to sit on the roof. One of them was testing the integrity of the hood ornament. "Best not," he advised.

"Suit yourself." The Sweet Sister of Mercy showed scant regard for her stowaways, shifting clumsily into gear and reversing at high speed. Several children scattered from the roof and rolled across the road, to stand a moment later and shake themselves off.

"What are you then?" One particularly grubby specimen enquired. Camellia looked down at the child. It was wide-eyed and inexplicably sticky. Cam was almost eighty percent sure it was a boy. He had the look of a ringleader about him. "You with the police?"

"I'm an assessor."

The boy wrinkled his nose, clearly unimpressed. Something unpleasant was bubbling in his left nostril. "What do you do then?"

"I assess things." Camellia took a coin from his waistcoat pocket and flicked it into the air with his thumb. "I'll give you this if you tell me where Sergeant Wilson is." The urchins of Laundry Alley knew everything about the street and who was where.

"Fifth one on the right." The boy flicked a thumb towards one of the flats, keeping his eye on the coin as it flipped. "I heard there's a body up there. Can we see it?"

Glancing around, Camellia noted the child's companions gathering on the other side of the road, watching the interaction with increasing suspicion. He left them to debate the purpose of his presence, going in search of his liaison.

Sergeant Wilson was a middling sort of man. Middle-aged, middle-weight, middle-rank, a man whose position would be considered neither insult nor preferential to either human or Auld Blood. Frequently found at the scene of such incidents, keeping the peace between disgruntled parties from both sides. He was talking to an old woman, nodding and murmuring as he made notes in a small, leatherbound notepad.

"Like I says," the woman's false teeth smacked in and out of her mouth, "she always seemed a nice sort, even for one of them." Her eyes slid to the new presence in their midst. "Nice girl. Clean. Quiet. One of them wassit-calleds. The quick ones. Worked on the assembly lines."

"They're called Dashers," Camellia confirmed. "Don't suppose you know which factory she worked at?"

The woman screwed her face up like she was tasting something sour. "Curstons, I reckon. Most of 'em around here work there."

The sergeant nodded. He thanked the woman and indicated Camellia should follow him into the flats. Both men kept a wary eye out. This was the sort of place where you kept your hands in your pockets.

Electricity hadn't made it as far as Laundry Alley. Neither had indoor plumbing, judging by the smell of it. The sergeant relayed the details as they climbed the several flights of stairs. "We've got one body in a bad state. Looks like she hit the limit but kept taking anyway." The sergeant shuddered. "All these kiddies about, could have been nasty. We've not got much to go on – no name, nothing."

That wasn't unusual. A lot of people in Laundry Alley didn't have names. Or the ones they did have changed frequently. The two men turned a narrow corner and made for the last door on the right. Together, they entered the flat and Camellia went to work.

There was a routine to completing an assessment. Certain things had to be ascertained. How bad was it? How much worse could it have been? Could they have stopped it? For the most part, the company tried to keep any incidents within the confines of their own ranks, but it was becoming harder as time went on.

There were thousands of registered users of Hallow within the city of Marien, not to mention the ever-increasing number of criminals selling contraband or stolen product. Control was essential. Thus, it was necessary to form a fragile alliance with the police.

Walking through the first room, Camellia made note of anything unusual. His daily dose, issued by Lavender each morning, allowed his eyes to see things Wilson and his men could not. It sharpened his senses, honing them to notice things beyond human awareness. On a good day he could hear a whispered conversation through solid wall. On his best day, a beetle could take a shit in the corner of the room and Camellia would know where not to step.

They called his type Sixers. As far as Cam was aware, he was one of only three in the capital, and the only one still active.

"She's in there," Sergeant Wilson flicked a thumb towards a closed door. Walking over and grasping the handle, Cam was unsurprised when the sergeant did not follow him. Auld deaths were rarely gentle.

Inside, the first thing he noticed was the smell. It was always the smell. Floaters, Shiners, Wailers, Nocs, Camellia had come across them all and they each had a distinct scent. Some were fragrant, others less so. The more they used, the fouler the stench became.

Daffodil was a Stout and always smelt like eggs. Forget-Me-Not, like most Sirens, smelt like fresh, wet soil. In the case of the woman lying across the bed, the aroma was pleasant, slightly buttery. That was the only pleasant thing about the scene.

To the untrained eye, it might have looked like a robbery had taken place. Camellia knew better than that. There was an entirely different reason for the broken furniture and torn curtains. It was clear that whatever had taken place, it had happened fast. The scratch marks etched into the wall had been made by the frantic movements of someone blind with panic.

There was a toll Hallow took on the body. It didn't matter who you were. It got you in the end. That was why the company kept tabs on all users. Cam crouched low at the side of the bed. The woman had been pretty, once. She looked young. Twenty or so and, aside from the obvious injuries caused by her contortions, would have presumably been in good health.

The sergeant lingered in the doorway; one hand pressed to his mouth. "What do you think? Looks like a straight case of overuse to me."

It might have looked that way, but Wilson was not blessed with Camellia's sensory skills. An almost empty bottle sat on the table by the bed. There was a little residue inside. Cam leant over and inhaled. Derived from the flowering buds of the Aulden tree, the first of which was said to have been touched by the Auld God during the creation, pure Hallow was unlike anything else. Cam wrinkled his nose. The contents were legitimate, company issued. That ruled out counterfeiting.

"I don't think so." He ran his eyes over the woman's broken body. "By the smell she can't have taken more than a few doses in the last week. Nobody noticed anything? No noises? No scratching or screaming?"

Wilson thumbed through his notes. "No, not a thing. According to the neighbours she was fine a few days ago."

Cam cocked his head. The woman sprawled across the bed, limbs snapped and twisted at unfathomable angles. From armpit to waist, several appendages sprouted through the muscle, protruding like skeletal arms that had not been able to finish forming. It gave her a spiderlike appearance, split skin of her torso hanging in strips from her ribcage. Cam stood. "One bottle wouldn't do this,"

"Might have been contaminated?" Sergeant Wilson offered. "Maybe she mixed it? It happens, especially with the Dashers. You see it now and again with the ones who work the factories. Production demand goes up, the foremen push too hard. Poor bastards end up running themselves into the ground."

Cam took the bottle from the bedside table in a gloved hand, drawing a cloth from his coat pocket. He wrapped the bottle and placed it inside. "Maybe, I'll take it to the company and have them take a look. I'll pay a visit to Curstons, too – see what I can find out."

He cast the unfortunate woman a sympathetic look. The Auld Bloods might have had their place in society, but it was a fragile one. Humans accepted their presence because it was to their advantage. But human tolerance tended only to last so long as your usefulness did.

Camellia did not relish what they were about to do, but it was necessary. They would need to ensure nobody outside the Providence Company could witness the extent of the woman's physical transformation. The last thing anyone needed was a panic.

The dead woman's new appendages would need to be removed before they took the body from the room. "Call the coroner. Tell them to bring a saw."