Solitary Read online

  Carmelo Massimo Tidona

  SOLITARY

  Series “Nocturnal”

  episode #3

  Translation from Italian to English by

  Carmelo Massimo Tidona

  for Zed Lab

  http://www.quellidized.it/zedlab

  www.quellidized.it

  www.0111edizioni.com

  www.quellidized.it

  SOLITARY

  Copyright © 2013 Zerounoundici Edizioni

  Copyright © 2013 Carmelo Massimo Tidona

  ISBN: 978-88-6578-234-7

  Cover: image courtesy of Victor Habbick /FreeDigitalPhotos.net

  Work autonomously proposed by the author, not submitted to selection from the publisher

  CHAPTER 1

  Grace Elmond paced the corridors of her clinic with the nervous movements of a caged beast.

  Almost all of her employees were busy in the fatiguing task of doing nothing at all, and not by choice. In that case she would have simply fired them. The truth was they had nothing to do.

  The inflow of patients had started decreasing gradually days ago, soon becoming close to zero, without any real explanation.

  From an humanitarian point of view, maybe, that should have made her happy. From her personal point of view it was a curse, and most of all it didn't make any sense.

  It was quite unlikely that no one in the city needed any medical care, or any of the other services she provided. She couldn't even consider the possibility that her patients were going elsewhere, since the best professionals of the field worked for her. There weren't many “elsewheres” to go to, nearby, and those few that were there weren't worth taking into consideration.

  The only real competition had always been those from the temples of various gods – of which Tejarak had a remarkable supply – who provided more or less free healing to their followers. Nothing to really worry about. Priests weren't able to cure just anything, and for sure they did not waste their time for other kinds of needs – as far as she could remember, she had never seen one of them taking care of crow's feet or cellulite – and most of all she couldn't believe that the entire city had become so religious all of a sudden, especially considering that the wide variety of the population of Tejarak inevitably led to having more inhabitants then there were temples to satisfy their need for faith.

  Still her waiting room – as she could see with her eyes now that she was walking through it, in case she had ever needed any additional proof – was empty, and there were no scheduled appointments for the rest of the day. She could only hope for some emergency.

  She went to the entrance and opened the door, peeling outside as if that could somehow bring new patients in.

  She looked out and saw no one walking down the alley leading to the clinic, either coming or going. Of course, who could ever be leaving if no one had arrived?

  The only living being in sight was a big black cat curled up in the sunlight right in front of the door, that when she arrived raised its head and looked up at her with a pair of bright green eyes.

  She shooed it with a kick.

  The cat drew back, hissed arching its back, then went away.

  Grace closed the door.

  She was about to go back to her office, without any real reason, when she saw a woman coming out of one of the corridors and cross the entrance hall. She was not too tall, casually dressed, with red curls flowing over her shoulders and lazily bouncing as she walked.

  «Good morning», she said, startling her.

  «Good morning», the woman replied in the unsure tone of someone who is answering a greeting for sheer politeness, but has no idea of who the other person is. Than a flash of awareness crossed her eyes. «Oh... you are doctor Elmond, aren't you?»

  Grace nodded. «And you are Amanda Sheldon». Even without the help of her good memory, it wouldn't have been hard to remember the name of the only one person booked for that day. «You've been here for doctor Lyana.»

  «A routine examination.»

  «I suppose everything is fine», Grace remarked, automatically looking down and Amanda's breast. Lyana was a very skilled witch, there had never been any problem with her patients, still she was very careful and never failed to check their progresses as long as needed.

  Amanda couldn't help noticing where the woman was looking. It was quite obvious, nonetheless she felt unease and was about to explain her why exactly she had needed the care of an expert in breast modeling. She didn't want to give her that satisfaction, though, and managed to just answer matter-of-factly, «Yes, no problems.»

  «I'm glad to hear this.»

  Amanda forced herself to smile and went away.

  It was the second time ever that she had met that woman – the first being the day she had had to go to the clinic for her surgery, and then they had exchanged maybe two words if not less – and it was enough to list her among the people she would never send a birthday card to, even if she had known when to do that.

  Her attitude was incredibly arrogant, as if she was two or three meters above the rest of the world population. She thought herself lucky that she didn't have to deal with her for her problem. Having one of your breasts ripped away by a raging gremlin was unpleasant enough even without the additional bonus of discussing the subject with a woman like that.

  Fortunately, doctor Lyana was completely different. Dealing with her it was almost possible to forget that she came from the same race as her mother, the woman she had met only once and she didn't have any interest or desire to meet again. Actually, the fact that she belonged to the fairy people was quite evident, if you knew where to look. Her features where too delicate, her frame too slender and graceful to be human, and her eyes betrayed her true age, or at least hinted that she was much older than the twenty or twenty-five years she showed. How much wasn't something Amanda was able to assess, but she believed that number should have been multiplied by ten, at the very least. After all, fairies were virtually immortal, they didn't age nor they show in any way the signs of passing time, thus as far as she knew she could have been a thousand or even a million years old. What she knew for sure was that she was very good at her job. She had recreated her breast almost from nothing, making the ugly scar on her chest disappear without a trace.

  When she opened the door to leave the clinic, Amanda found at her feet a black cat, blissfully curled up under the sun.

  The feline slowly lifted its head, as if her coming had disturbed it while it was busy in some very interesting philosophical dissertation, and looked up at her with two piercing emerald-green eyes. It didn't even try to move aside.

  «Hey!» she exclaimed with a smile, switching instinctively to that particularly stupid tone people almost automatically starts to use when talking to a baby or an animal, as if talking that way could somehow allow them to understand whatever was being said. «What are you doing here? I don't think you need breast surgery».

  The cat tilted its head on a side like someone who just heard a very poor joke. Then it stood with a smooth, typically catlike movement, and approached her, rubbing against her jeans with a seducing attitude.

  Amanda sat on the balls of her feet, moving slowly not to scare it, and scope it up in her arms. It let her. She examined it.

  It's fur was smooth, soft and glossy, very clean. It didn't look like a stray cat, yet it had no collar or tag, or whatever could identify it as belonging to someone. That didn't mean much, though. It was very likely that somewhere a little girl was desperate for the loss of her kitty, although actually it was rather a big cat.

  Amanda decided to bring it along. She was going to the police anyway – to pay a visit to Shim, who had just recovered after a nasty adventure – so she could leave it there in order for it to be brought back to its r
ightful owner.

  Caressing and petting her new friend, she hit the road.

  CHAPTER 2

  After a rather instantaneous travel from the nearest station to the one near the police precinct – during which her passenger had behaved with utter indifference, just as if going through a portal was something it did every day – Amanda walked the short distance to her destination.

  She was about to enter the building when, suddenly, the cat slipped out of her hands, touched the ground for less than an heartbeat and climbed on the trunk of a nearby tree. She could only watch it jump from branch to branch, until it climbed down from a different tree and disappeared leaping into an alley. She tried to follow, but it was a wasted effort. By the time she reached the corner, the cat was already gone without a trace.

  Thinking that sooner or later it would go back home even without her help, she shrugged and turned back.

  The precinct looked much less frantic than the last time she had visited. She didn't have any trouble drawing the attention of the officer at the reception desk and ask him to inform detective Stonehand that she was there.

  The man touched the communication crystal on his desk and, further to a short telepathic conversation that she obviously couldn't hear, he announced, «He says to reach him in his office. It's...»

  «Yes, yes, I know, thank you», she interrupted with a thankful smile, going forward through the corridor.

  Soon she was knocking on the office door of Shim Stonehand, the detective head of the Magic Control Department, and entering without waiting for an answer.

  Shim, sitting at his desk, absently closed a folder of documents he was reading, and looked up to her.

  «Manda. How come you're here?»

  «I came to see how you were», she replied. «I know you've had quite a miserable time».

  «I've been put back to form», he said, showing her his perfectly normal left hand. Nothing showed that just a few days ago it had been no more than a heap of charred flesh. She didn't make him notice that she didn't know enough about the events to understand his gesture.

  «I've been at the clinic this morning, I thought you might be there but they told me you weren't. I understood you were already back at work.»

  «Elmond's clinic?» he asked.

  She nodded, vaguely surprised by that question. When speaking about clinics in Tejarak, there wasn't much need for further information usually.

  «I didn't go there at all. I don't find doctor Elmond really... likeable.»

  «I can't blame you. But... don't tell me you went to a temple for healing?!»

  «Indeed I'm not telling you. No, there's a new clinic which started recently, in the historical center.»

  «Really?»

  He nodded. «I don't know why they call it a clinic at all, actually. There's only one healer taking care of everything. Probably even cleaning the place. But he's good.»

  «Just one? He mustn't have a lot of work if he is able to do everything.»

  «He's busy as hell. I don't know how he handles all that. But he's good. He fixed me in a second, and you should have seen what a mess I was.»

  «How a mess?»

  «Like someone who had a fireball explode in his hand.»

  «What was that happened to you exactly?»

  «A fireball exploded in my hand.»

  «Ah!»

  A few instants passed before Amanda started to talk again, breaking the embarrassed silence she had fallen into.

  «I brought something for you», she said, starting to rummage in her bag. After a while she pulled out a rectangular box, of a brown so dark it was almost black.

  «Chocolates?» he asked unconvinced.

  «Dark chocolate and rum», she pointed out.

  «How nice», he replied in a polite tone. They had been knowing each other since she still needed diapers, and she'd never seen him eat chocolate. Still that didn't stop her from bringing some to him at any even slightly favorable occasion.

  «You could at least taste one.»

  «I could», he mumbled.

  «One day I'll convert you to chocolate.»

  «Unless I have myself killed in the meantime.»

  «What's this sudden burst of pessimism?»

  «No pessimism. I'm realist. I’ve been flying on an ambulance twice in less than a month lately. If I haven’t yet been able to get myself killed, that's just because I didn't try hard enough.»

  «And knowing how near you could be to your last breath, you really want to leave this world without ever tasting a delicious rum-filled dark chocolate?» she mocked him.

  «No. I'm sure you'll put one in my mouth on my deathbed.»

  «Now that's an idea.»

  «By the way...»

  «About ideas?»

  «About dead.»

  «What a happy morning today...»

  «We collected the books in the house of that Marsten, do you know who I'm talking about?»

  «All too well». How could she have forgotten the man who had summoned a succubus who had almost killed her, not before using her in ways she really hoped she could delete from her memories?

  «I was reading the report just now. It seems there was no spell for summoning incubi in there.»

  «No?»

  «What he was trying to do, according to my experts, was summoning a demon.»

  «Really?»

  He nodded seriously.

  «Then we're lucky he only succeeded in summoning a succubus.»

  «So it seems. But that doesn't sound right. How can you try to summon a demon and end up with a succubus instead?»

  «Are you asking that to me?»

  «No. I asked my experts, and they say there is a connection between demons and incubi which could explain that.»

  «But?»

  «But I never liked conditionals. I'm trying to obtain a permit to question Marsten directly, provided the bureaucracy allows me.»

  «Since there is no trial involved, they shouldn't have a problem with that, should they?» Questioning deceased witnesses, just like using seers to learn about past events, was an activity subjected to strict controls, because results obtained that way weren't deemed valid evidence in a court case. There was no way to record or publicly show what the medium or the seer had learned, and regardless of the trust that could be put in them, there was still some uncertainty. For this reason, permits to proceed with this kind of investigations were granted very rarely, not to run the risk of voiding an entire trial.

  «They shouldn't, indeed. I told you I don't like conditionals. I've started to think they see problems anyway, just for the sake of it. Anyway...» he literally jumped down from the chair and turned around the desk. By then he was quite trained in going up and down chairs which were completely unfitting for his size without looking clumsy or ridiculous.

  «I'm glad you came but I have to get back to work», he said. «What are your plans? Maybe we can meet later for a coffee. I'll pay.»

  «I'm free for the rest of the day. I'm going to do some shopping. What about coming for dinner at my place?»

  He stood silent for a while, pondering something.

  «I'd like to, but I can't.»

  «I didn't say I am going to cook», she giggled.

  «Fine. But still it will be for another time. I think I'll go to bed as soon as I finish here.»

  «Right, right, you're recovering, you can never be too serious with things like that at your age...»

  She stood up and went to the door, turning her back to his smile and his simultaneous reproachful gaze. «Don't bother to show me the way out, I know it. See you soon.»

  «Don't bring chocolates!» he shouted at her back while the door was closing.

  CHAPTER 3

  In spite of his reaction to Amanda's joke, Shim had to admit that maybe he was starting to feel the weight of his accumulating years. Or that he hadn't yet fully recovered from the meeting with Wilton Grange's undead, that aside from putting him in an awful situation had fo
rced him to use very drastic methods to get rid of them.

  The second option was the most likely, actually. At one hundred and three years, he was a bit more than a kid for his people. Quite too early to start feeling the problems of the third age. Unless all the humans he had to deal with every day had started to transmit to him by osmosis some of their humanity, just like they had done for the taste for coffee. In truth, that dark and bitter drink disgusted him a little, yet he couldn't do without drinking it, especially when, just like now, his eyelids where struggling to stay up.

  While going toward the coffee-maker he met Celendlinis Delmenar, the head of the first homicide squad. The elf didn't even look at him and walked by, head high, pretending not to see him at all, even though it was more than obvious that he had seen him quite well.

  Shim ignored him.

  The relationship between them had become even harsher further to his return to work. Although Shim usually did his best to keep a polite attitude toward his colleague, as hard as it was for anyone who didn't have the patience of a god, when he had returned to the precinct and had been informed of the news, he hadn't been able to persist in that behavior.

  Celen had spent the previous week boasting about how he had dispatched the undead responsible of a massacre at the precinct – killing the coroner, doctor Crew, first, followed by twelve officers, before anyone could stop him. The truth was quite different. The elf had only had the remarkable timing of hitting the creature with a spell in the very moment it had ceased living by its own accord – if his could be called life anyway – due to the death of his creator. Actually there was no way for him, or even for Shim, to be aware of this detail. It hadn't been the statement in itself indeed – after all it could even have been made in good faith – to upset the dwarf. Quite simply, he couldn't really understand how Celen could rejoice for having killed the undead when he knew all too well that there would have been no need to kill him if the corpse had been moved – as per his explicit request – to the morgue of his department. No undead could have come to life in there.