Wonderland City Read online

  Table of Contents

  Wonderland City

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Epilogue

  More from Rhys Ford

  About the Author

  By Rhys Ford

  Visit DSP Publications

  Copyright

  Wonderland City

  By Rhys Ford

  When Xander Spade went through the Looking Glass, he wasn’t looking for salvation. He’d been running from the devil who took his soul, only to fall prey to the greatest monster in Wonderland City, the Queen of Hearts. Years later, the Queen is dead and Xander has a chance to go through the Looking Glass and back home where he belongs.

  Xander’s devil wants him to find a little girl who escaped into Wonderland City, before her presence brings down an apocalypse of uncontrollable chaos to the already mad world. Along with Jean Michel, the former Knave of Hearts, Xander now is in a race against time to find the missing child before all Hell breaks loose and he loses his chance to go home.

  Originally published in the anthology Devil Take Me.

  To Lisa, the Maddest of Hatters and the most Alice of Alices.

  Acknowledgments

  I WANT to thank the Five, and my sisters-in-arms, as well as Dreamspinner Press for having my back.

  And a huge shout-out and all the coffee (coffee-tea for one of the whackos) to my partners in this anthology: The Co-Jordans, Hawk and Castillo Price; Ginn Hale; C.S. Poe; and of course, my beloved Jabberwocky, TA Moore. Thanks for the ride, babes. Time to take over the worlds.

  Of course, my dearest fondest affection and admiration for Lewis Carroll and the worlds he shared with me. Thank you for taking me there and back again on the most wonderful of adventures.

  One

  FUNNY THING about Wonderland City—even after decades of living behind the looking glass, I’m still fucking surprised by how weird it gets.

  Like how the hell does a five-foot-tall White Rabbit in cargo shorts and a fedora get his damned hairy paw to work a shotgun trigger?

  “I am so fucking sick of chasing that damned rabbit,” I muttered at the knee-high hedgehog crouched into a quivering ball next to me. He didn’t look up, and I didn’t blame him. The dumpster we were hiding next to had already taken more than its share of damage from the sporadic wide-spray shots the rabbit was packing, and from the itch forming on my scalp, I knew I’d be picking pulverized brick grit out of my hair later.

  If there was a later.

  Back before I met the Devil and bled my soul out into his hands, I’d have thought chasing a cigar-munching white bunny with pink eyes was something I’d only run into after I chewed on a few peyote buttons.

  Now it was a typical Tuesday.

  Another blast struck the wall above our heads, and it let loose a storm of rubble. The hedgehog squeaked and impossibly seemed to roll into a tighter ball. His worn felt top hat was on the ground by his back feet, the brim soaking up a bit of the sewer water that dripped from the cracked metal dumpster. Its obviously hand-knitted pink scarf had become a rosary of sorts during the trouble we’d stumbled into. He methodically skimmed his tiny fingers over its tassels, from left to right.

  “I just need a clear shot of the bastard,” I informed my bristly friend. “It’s just that he’s so damned fast.”

  Mister Hedgehog lifted his head up just enough to give me a withering look and narrow his beady brown eyes with a clear judgment of my intelligence. “He’s a rabbit.”

  Even if I had a snappy reply, I didn’t get to answer him, because my bounty, with his seemingly endless supply of shotgun shells, peppered the dumpster again and pushed me back from its edge.

  The street had been teeming with people a few minutes before, but once the rabbit caught sight of me, he pulled a sawed-off shotgun out of God knew where and began to blast up the small open-air marketplace. The commotion sent everyone flying for cover. His aim was poor enough that his first victims were a seedless watermelon and a couple of cantaloupes, but it was enough of a juicy splash to serve notice of what would happen to someone’s head if the rabbit got it right.

  There were a couple of women a few feet away who were hunkered down behind a fishmonger’s stall, and every once in a while I could see the stall owner’s tuft of feathers poke out as he moved around. The stall didn’t look very big—certainly not big enough for a griffin to fully hide from a rogue gunman. There were a few people on the ground covering their heads with their hands as they lay facedown on cobblestones. Occasionally one of them would draw the rabbit’s attention when they tried to skitter to the side.

  Problem was, hiding behind the dumpster, I couldn’t see when the rabbit’s pink eyes were on someone else, so returning his fire with my revolver was hit-and-miss.

  The Beckett Street Marketplace was set up at the end of a cul-de-sac, an old-style courtyard that once hosted tea parties and games of charades played for bored aristocrats and their long-suffering servants. Those days were long gone. The former palace gardens, with their labyrinth of walkways, were now city streets bristling with tenements and factories. But there were still signs of the deposed Queen of Hearts’ kingdom if you knew where to look.

  I just tried not to look.

  “Stay down,” I told the hedgehog. “I’m going to see if I can get closer.”

  He might’ve made a noise, or he could have had gas. Either way, he emitted a long, wavering squeal of a sound and began his tassel counting again.

  “I’m not going to let you take me in, Spade!” The rabbit fired another shot, but I couldn’t tell where he was aiming. Someone in the trapped crowd screamed, and the rabbit yelled back, “Shut your face. That was nowhere near you. I’m going to give you all fifteen seconds to get out of here. Then I’m going to come out shooting, and if anyone is in between me and Spade, I hope you’ve made peace with your maker.”

  Mister Hedgehog was gone before the rabbit even began counting. He snatched up his top hat, shoved it on his head, and scurried off, his pink scarf flapping behind him. The exodus that followed was as noisy and alarming as a sugar-cube mountain covered with toddlers.

  To be honest, I didn’t think the rabbit could count as high as fifteen.

  I knew the White Rabbit.

  He was what I liked to call a legacy bounty—a dumb-as-a-rock career criminal who couldn’t seem to catch a break, no matter what.

  I knew his great-grandfather once, and let’s just say the family was never known for its luck.

  The chase was already going to shit by the time the rabbit ducked into the Stews. It was difficult to see the late afternoon sky through the tightly clustered tenements, and the threat of rain clung to the air—a snap of electricity with the crackle of brimstone overlaid the fetid aroma of the warrens. I caught a few glimpses of its milky-sienna cloud cover, and the swirling specks of black ash kicked up from the smokestacks swarmed in a faux murmuration and scattered under the hot June winds. The summer heat never let up, and the incoming storm would only make things muggy and cloying and work the slums’ simmering anger right to the razor’s edge.

  If I was lucky, I would be able to grab the rabbit and get out of the Stews before the storm hit.

  But much like the rabbit and his ill-fated and now-headless great-grandfather, I was never known for my luck.

  The rabbit got up to eight, and then I took my chances.

  I didn’t know exactly where the rhino was going, but he gave good cover, especially since he was shuffling on his hands and knees. I timed my sprint, dodged between hulking bodies and shadows, and hoped the rabbit wouldn’t notice a blur o
f movement going the wrong way. I went down hard on my knee when my foot got caught in the ruffled hem of an old woman’s long dress and my boot slid out from under me. She hit me with her purse and caught my chin with its bamboo handles, but I didn’t stop to check if she was okay. Her elderly, hunched-over body was enough to let me know she was human, from the other side of the looking glass, just like me.

  Wonderland City and its people were different, less human. Births were rare and usually not welcome. People—especially the ones who looked human—aged at such a slow rate, it was impossible to tell how old anyone was. Yet I’d never seen a looking-glass person as old as the woman I’d nearly stampeded over. She must’ve been at the end of her life when she traded her soul to come here and was trapped in its eternal amber stasis, where she felt every ache and pain of her decrepit body.

  I’d like to say I was smart and made that deal when I was in my late twenties, but if I’d been smart, I never would have said yes to the man with the wicked smile when he found me lying in the middle of the back-country crossroads I’d been dumped on.

  So instead I was here—hunting rabbit.

  “All I need to make this day extra special is a fat little pony with a flower crown,” I grumbled to myself as I worked across the cobblestones on my belly. Clutching my revolver in one hand made the going difficult, but I couldn’t go into the situation unarmed, especially since the rabbit had a shotgun. “I don’t even know the name to that stupid opera.”

  But I hummed it to myself all the way over.

  The rabbit hadn’t seen me. I found him holed up against a stack of books that were a moldering pile of cracked spines and damp pages. It hurt to see the novels exposed to the harsh elements of the Stews’ weather, but not a lot of people in Wonderland read. I saw no sign of the bookseller. If I had, I’m not too sure I wouldn’t have shot him too, just for what he let happen to the books.

  But I couldn’t get sidetracked, not while the White Rabbit still held the cul-de-sac hostage and I hadn’t gotten paid for the high price placed on his head. I shoved my revolver into the thigh holster I had strapped to my leg and quickly sketched out a plan in my head to take the rabbit down.

  It pretty much involved me leaping on top of him and beating him senseless.

  As plans went it was a classic and one that worked countless times before, but something was off about the rabbit and I wanted to make sure I got a good look at him before I went in.

  His fedora had to be something he inherited from another relative, because uneven slots had been cut out of the crown, giving him space to pull his ears through. A custom hat with ear holes cost a pretty penny, something a down-on-his-luck rabbit would hock for easy cash. Up close he looked like a mangy, bloated version of a child’s pet… if that pet could stand on its hind legs while wielding a shotgun. He’d poked a stick through the trigger guard to give himself something to pull back with both of his paws. But in order to shoot, he had to brace the shotgun against his body. It explained his bad aim and the gunpowder stains on his belly and leg.

  I honestly wouldn’t have given him credit for being that smart, but sometimes even the dumbest of people surprise me.

  That was another thing about Wonderland City and how long I’d been there. I no longer questioned if a talking animal could be considered people.

  I doubt many of them thought the same of me.

  He was on his tiptoes, elongating himself to see over the now-thinning migration. The backs of his feet were stained to a mottled soot and thickened with clumps of matted fur and debris. He might’ve been handsome at some point in his life, if someone were into rabbits, but he’d let himself go. His bloated belly was sparsely furred in spots, and I was pretty sure his cargo shorts were held up more by his tail poking out between the seams than by the strength of its buttons at his waistband.

  His pink eyes were swollen, a sure sign he was on something. The rabbit’s whiskers were a blur of movement across his muzzle, an elaborate fan dance of frenetic energy no one in their right mind would mistake for anything other than panic. His nails were long, broken off, and yellowed, and his protruding front teeth weren’t much better. His nose was puffy, either from drink or drugs, and one nostril wept copiously, its viscous flow glittered with an incandescent sparkle.

  I was worried about him biting me. Those teeth weren’t just for show, and even though I was hard to kill by looking-glass standards, the bacteria in his mouth could be deadly if they got into my bloodstream. I’d been bitten before by an enraged quokka, and the infection it gave me laid me out for two months.

  A kingdom had fallen while I lay in that stupor, and when I woke up, my already fucked-up world had gone to shit.

  I didn’t even want to imagine what a White Rabbit’s bite could do to me, and from the looks of the gunk on his back claws, if he raked me open with his feet, I’d be just as bad off.

  Someone knocked something over at one of the stalls—something heavy and metal that clattered to the cobblestones in a rattle loud enough to wake the dead. The rabbit jerked his head toward the sound. His eyes were wild, their light-blush pupils blown out so wide there was nothing left of his darker-pink irises. Desperation might have made him twitchy, but something else was fueling his paranoia. I must have made a noise, or perhaps the fact that he was a prey animal alerted him to my presence, because his ears twitched toward me and he whipped about, his eyes pinned to my face.

  I didn’t wait for him to brace his shotgun. There was no such thing as a fair fight, just fights you could walk away from. That was a motto I lived by. It didn’t matter how I won, as long as I won. If the White Rabbit had learned anything about me, he would have thrown down his weapon and given in, but despite every single time I’d been sent to bring him down, he refused to surrender.

  This time he might’ve crossed the line. The police were corrupt and ineffectual, paid to look the other way by powerful men and influential women. Wonderland City was the central buffer point of the old kingdom’s chopped-up remains, and the Queens were supposed to share rulership—keep up with its infrastructure and support its people—but that had fallen by the wayside a long time ago. It was a shining cesspool of sin and decadence, ruled by hardened criminals with deep pockets and long memories.

  But there was one thing everyone knew—a dead person couldn’t spend money, and cold hard cash was what kept Wonderland City alive. Its complicated and vast underworld worked hard to protect the average law-abiding citizen. Even in the darkest of corners, a person was relatively safe—or at least during the daytime hours—and assholes like the White Rabbit twitching in front of me endangered that. Nothing motivated justice more than a cut into a gaming hell’s profits, and shooting up the street was going to be a very large black mark against him, but I didn’t care. While the White Rabbit was bad for my client’s business, he was really good for mine.

  I jumped him before he could bring the shotgun around and punched him in the nose as I tumbled him over. I was right about the feet. He kicked like a mule and caught me in the nuts and the stomach. I felt the sting across my ribs, but I couldn’t stop to check to see if he’d cut through my shirt. We grappled, and I flung him down to the ground and bashed his head into the cobblestones, but the slick ground caught our momentum and we slid over the slimy layer of muck.

  “Oy! Watch what you’re going at!” A ham-sized fist belonging to an enormous human shook with anger in front of my nose when we skidded to a stop against the vegetable stand.

  There was barely enough room between the rabbit’s face and mine for the man’s hand, but he shoved it in there anyway. Tightening my legs around the rabbit’s knees, I immobilized him and pinned him to the street. The hand belonged to a burly man who stank of fish and possibly cow shit—a dockside worker coming home after a long shift. He was angry, probably driven by the self-righteous frustration of a man kept poor by circumstance, but I could have used his help back when the White Rabbit was laying down a spray of buckshot.

  I didn’t bla
me him for his rage. As far as he knew, I could’ve been shaking down the rabbit for something and the smelly furred miscreant was in the right. The Stews were a hotbed of criminal activity and treachery, the perfect place for the rabbit to hide, but I knew most of the side streets and tight alleys.

  I’d fled to the Stews following the Queen of Hearts’ execution and the fall of her kingdom. Once the revolution stripped the monarchy of its power, I went begging for the means to survive. When I toppled through the looking glass and into a cesspool of corruption and chaos ruled by an old woman with delusions of godlike grandeur, it’d been pretty much an “out of the frying pan and into the fire” situation.

  But I needed him to move his fist out from in front of my face and some reassurance that he wasn’t going to finish what the White Rabbit started, so I pulled my gun out and put its muzzle between his eyes.

  “Leave off, fool!” Mister Hedgehog was back, standing a few feet away from the fray. My faithless knee-high companion in the black top hat was still working his pink-yarn rosary with a nervous pace, but he leaned forward and hissed at the dockworker as though I couldn’t hear him. “That’s the Queen’s Ace.”

  The crowd that had gathered in the brief time the rabbit and I tussled parted away from me as cleanly as though I were a Jabberwocky coming to eat them for lunch. A tense panic ran over the small cluster of people, and most dropped their gaze from my face. But there was always the possibility someone would get it into their head to try to bring me down.

  Crowds got ugly if they knew a killer walked among them.

  I know.

  I had the scars to prove it.

  After I secured my bounty’s elbows behind his back, I yanked the rabbit up to his feet, mindful of his back legs. His face was bloodied, and if he survived the night, he probably would have to get that nose looked at if he wanted to breathe through his right nostril again. But for the most part, he was intact—except for the two massive front teeth he’d once sported below those twitchy whiskers.