A Prince Among Men Part 16

"You come because I call. You work for me, remember. I want answers."

"You have answers," he snapped. "You even have reports. Against my better judgment. Read them. They have your answers. Otherworld intrusions have increased by four hundred percent. Magic is on the increase. For now, it is mostly manliest in desolate and wild places, but if the trend continues there will soon be fairy beings and monsters haunting the cities. We face a crisis, and it could grow worse quickly."

d.a.m.n him! He had taken and twisted things around on her before she'd gotten half started, raising her fears to where she had to ask, "What do you mean?"

"The incident at the Woodman Museum was only the first part of a two-part s.h.i.+ft in the balance. The first part you know, the awakening of a man long held in magical bondage in the otherworld. With his release, more of the energy the agents of the otherworld need to operate here has become available. You are seeing the results in the reports you demand so insistently. These strange happenings are only a prelude. As dangerous as these intrusions are, the man himself poses an even greater threat."

"This man! This man!" d.a.m.n, she was fl.u.s.tered. "It's been a month since his-what did you call it?-awakening and you still haven't learned who he is."

"Untrue."

b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Always with a trump card. "All right. Who is this dangerous man?"

"His name is Artos."

"That's it? Not even a family name? Or is that a family name?"

"Just Artos. Other appellations have been applied, but none was used with a clear preference. He was a warrior once. A ruler, too. Some thought he was very good at what he did. There were songs sung about him."

"How do you know all this?"

"Confidential sources."

Was he baiting her on purpose? "You work for me, you little b.a.s.t.a.r.d. You will tell me where you are getting your information."

"For the moment I work for you, Ms. Martinez. Since you have been expressing something less than satisfaction with my work lately, I feel that I need to maintain my independent a.s.sets."

"Who else are you working with?"

"You wrong me. You are the only one paying me. But employment isn't what binds us, it is the threat of the other-world. I suggest that you consider the data I have given rather than worrying about its source. Truth is truth, even when spoken by a habitual liar."

How was it that he got calmer as she lost control? Well, he wouldn't get away with it. She forced herself to sit back and rest her arms on the arms of her chair. Calm, she told herself as she pressed the stud that activated her chair's relaxation routine. It took effect almost immediately, and her voice was down to its normal register when she said, "The problem with habitual liars is that you can never believe anything they say."

"Do you consider me a habitual liar, Ms. Martinez? Is that why you use this chair?"

In the grip of the relaxation routine, she didn't start. Her voice held only curiosity. "You know about the chair?"

"I do. I take no offense from it because it is a sensible precaution. You are wise to take precautions."

"Am I wise to trust you?"

"I am not the one to ask. I have not led you astray."

"Not yet."

"It is not in my interest to do so. We have a common enemy and we need each other. Especially now."

A surge of fear threatened to overwhelm her relaxed state. She forced it away. Information. She needed information to control the situation. "Why now? Something to do with the crisis you mentioned?"

"Yes. The second part. In the past, this Artos has been a.s.sociated with a magical artifact of significant power. through close a.s.sociation with this talisman he has become, shall we say, dependent on it. Now that he is free, I believe he will seek it out. Should he do so and successfully retrieve it, there will be a significant increase in the otherworldly energy permeating our world. Such an increase will be enough to cause a radical s.h.i.+ft in the balance. Society will fragment and civilization as we know it will devolve into a new dark age."

"So you want to find him and kill him before he gets this talisman."

"No. Ultimately, that will change nothing. The talisman is the key. It must be destroyed."

"And what will happen if the talisman is destroyed?"

"The energies enwrapped in holding it will be forever bound. Having curtailed further disruption, we may be able to deal with the current effects and minimize the damage."

"Return the balance to where it was."

"Possibly. I can make no promises."

"Can I trust you, Sorli?"

"We are working for the same goal here, Ms. Martinez. I no more want to see my world controlled by the beings that rule the otherworld than you do."

Truth, the monitor said. Rock-solid truth.

Pamela would not let her world be destroyed by magic.

"All right, Mr. Sorli, do whatever you have to. Destroy this talisman thing."

Astrid was relieved to see the wan light illuminating the emergency phone box. She knew she hadn't been walking for more than a quarter mile, but the dark made it seem forever. Her heels didn't help either; the gravel by the roadbed was safer than the slush-covered ice on the road, but too unstable for comfortable walking. Not for the first time she chided herself for not taking reasonable boots. She'd heard the forecast; she knew better.

But the car wasn't supposed to get a flat tire and she wasn't supposed to be here slogging along a deserted highway at eleven-oh-bleeping-thirty at night.

There was a dark, shadowy lump by the phone box. Her first thought upon seeing it was that it was some derelict or wino huddled against the cold. Silly girl, she told herself. Too much city living. It was probably just a pile of debris collected from along the highway, put here by the cleanup crews for easier spotting by the truck that would haul it away.

It stirred, and she thought her first impression was right. Then she saw the pale, curled fingers on the ground. Dead man's fingers. The dark lump rose up, resolving itself into the shape of a hulking Sumo refugee. She froze in place, chilled deeper than the cutting wind could account for.

The killer held something in his hands, something soft and yielding in the grip, something that dripped. A dark-red watch cap. The killer pulled on the cap, drawing her attention to his face. That face would have been at home in a horror vid. He grinned crookedly at her, showing teeth out of a dentist's nightmare.

"Good night it is. Two for Old s.h.a.ggs tonight."

She screamed, but the wind tore away the sound.

Turning, she immediately lurched off balance as one of her d.a.m.ned heels slid off a rock and snapped. She fell hard. Before she could scramble up, she felt a presence looming over her. The heat of his body washed over her, as did his fetid breath. The smells of decaying organic matter and fresh blood clogged her nose.

A huge hand came down on her shoulder, half engulfing her neck. Sharp nails dug into her flesh. She screamed again and started her hopeless struggle.

The b.a.s.t.a.r.d strangling her actually laughed.

Holger saw the thing that had taken to living in the alley behind Rezcom 3 every night during the stakeout. He didn't know what it was, but he knew it for something from that other place, the place where the monsters came from. Out of habit he noted its patterns, the way it moved, its hunting grounds, and soon had it pegged as a scavenger living off the bountiful refuse of the rezcom. But he didn't do anything about it. Not even when it took the addict that stumbled into its territory. Scavengers kill live prey when they can get away with it; it was the way of nature. Watching with professional interest, he noted that nature's way applied to the unnatural as well. He didn't interfere. It wasn't his business.

He knew about the other watchers too, but he stayed out of their way, especially once he spotted a familiar silhouette spending time parked next to one of the watchers' cars: Vadama. Staying out of his way was usually the safer course. Holger did his best to keep his own surveillance less visible.

But two weeks of physical and electronic watch on the rezcom brought him nothing. Even tailing Marianne Reddy unearthed no sign of the missing John Reddy. Holger wasn't really surprised; the kid hadn't even shown up for his own funeral. Tailing the mother had seemed a good tack; since John wasn't dead, it seemed likely that he would try to contact his mother once things calmed down. It had been a bad guess.

The trail was cold; he left it to the Mitsutomo boys.

Abandoning his watch on the boy's mother, Holger retraced his steps, looking for something he had missed, anything that might be out of place. He looked again at the murder that had happened a few days before John's disappearance. The victim, one Emilio Winston, had been missing lor several days before turning up dead in a drug-related crime. Winston had been a student at John's university. A connection?

Holger hacked his way into the university computer net.

Winston, the victim, had been on the freshman basketball team with John. That was a connection, but what kind? Another kid, a freshman named Trahn, had disappeared from the university about the same time as Winston. Holger ran a few files and discovered that Trahn's psych profile didn't look like your typical runaway's. Trahn had been enrolled in one of John's cla.s.ses. Holger set a couple of search routines loose on the files and waited for results. The expert systems didn't live up to their name; they turned up nothing.

Maybe it was the fact that John himself had disappeared now that made Holger want to connect the two previous disappearances. Maybe he was just grasping at straws. In any case, he took a look through the university records for himself.

He started with campus security, since they had checked into both disappearances. Trahn had last been seen on the day before Winston's last appearance. Close, but not close enough. Lots of witnesses, John included, had seen Trahn in an Enviro lab, but n.o.body after that. The kid had been there after most of them had left, but John's account said that Trahn left before he did. Sometime after Trahn left the lab, then; and before supper, since his roommate reported that Trahn had failed to show up for their supper date. A window of only an hour or so.

Winston's disappearance was more problematic. In fact, he seemed to be almost nonexistent for most of the day before he was listed as missing; only his roommate had seen him that day. Odd, since the psych profile showed him to be a gregarious sort. But then, the profile didn't show him as a drug abuser, either.

Why hadn't the police followed up on that? Even if they had, what would they have turned up? There didn't seem to be any connections between the two disappearances. But nearness of the timing still bothered Holger; that, and the fact that they were both too uncharacteristic for the people involved.

He cast his net wider, using one of the Department's cover idents to put a general request into the police computer. Scanning the missing-persons list for a month on either side of the museum incident, he found another university connection in among the list of names. Four days after the museum incident one Harold Black, a custodian at the university, was listed as missing. Holger called up the report. Black had checked out of work on time the Friday before the incident and failed to report to work the following Monday. Coincidence? Maybe. The investigating officer noted that Black had checked out the previous Friday, citing illness, and had been absent from work for the first three days of the following week. No one had seen the guy during that period. Interesting time frame. Black's whereabouts were unknown for a period almost exactly matching Winston's period of being l he invisible man.

Holger added Black into his mixing bowl and stirred, waiting for something to stick together. Black popped up as the source of Winston's reported connection with unsavory characters on the day before the boy disappeared. Very interesting. Holger called for Black's file. The datapic was unfamiliar, and Holger was sure he would have remembered such an ugly face; he had never seen the guy before. The file was spa.r.s.e; the guy was a work-relief type and had been with the university for only a little over a year. The university computer didn't have anything but the basics on him before that I lolger ran down the references and learned they were fakes. Not unusual in itself, but suggestive in the current circ.u.mstances.

Not expecting any results, he placed a call to the last address in Black's file. To his surprise, a gruff voice answered.

"h.e.l.lo?"

"Am I speaking to Mr. Harold Black?" Holger asked in his best phone-solicitor voice.

"Yeah," the voice responded suspiciously.

"Mr. Black, you have been selected by our computer to receive a wonderful prize. All you have to do to receive this prize is to verily a few bits of information. Would you be willing to do that?"

"Don't want no prize. Good-bye."

The connection went dead, but Holger's console displayed confirmation that the phone line had connected to the address in Black's file. It was in the Providence district of the Northeast sprawl. Not a nice place by all accounts-but by implication, Mr. Harold Black was not a nice man.

Holger had a few questions for Mr. Harold Black.

Jessie didn't want to wake up, in fact she dreaded the idea, but the alarm across the room shrilled at her insistently. She'd made sure it was across the room when she'd crawled into bed-what? She squinted across at the clamoring clock-four hours ago. If she had left it within reach of the bed she would have destroyed the blasted thing.

And her chance for making the deadline, as well.

Summoning a gigantic effort of will, she flung back the covers and dragged herself up, crossing the room in quick, chilled strides.

Silence, blessed silence.

But not relief. For that she'd have to make the pour. Greyshelda Prototypes would be unhappy if she didn't deliver the model today, so unhappy that they'd invoke the failed-delivery clause in her contract. She knew they would; they'd always done so before. But this time she couldn't afford it; she needed every one of the dollars credited to her account. She tugged on her robe. If she made the pour right away, the model would be cured-barely-by the time she got to their offices.

The light in her workroom was on. She didn't remember leaving it on, but then, she hadn't been thinking very straight when she'd collapsed last night. Two days without sleep did that for you. Waking up with her head on her worktable, next to the food she'd just fixed, had been a clue that she'd needed sleep more than sustenance. Now that she'd had some of the former, the latter sounded good, even if it was to be the Zapper Instameal she had 'waved before cras.h.i.+ng.

She was annoyed when she saw that the Paperform tray was empty, its compartments as clean as if they had been licked. The ultrasonic vermin guard had to be on the blink again if the rats had gotten in. Then she noticed the pyramidal pile of peas next to the tray. Rats didn't do that.

Beyond the peas was something that made Jessie's knees weak. She sat down to avoid falling down, and stared. Sitting on the table next to the plate was the mold, open, and next to it a casting, all clean and polished.

Rats didn't do that, either.

Pamela swiveled the secondary monitor around to where McAlister could see the image.

"Can you tell me what it is?"

He gave the screen a quick glance. "One of Sorli's toys."

"He built it under your nose and with Mitsutomo money, and you're telling me that you don't know what it is?"

"No idea." He seemed undisturbed by his lack of understanding. "Technics isn't my specialty."

"Can you get it to one of our research teams?"

"Sure, but he'll know." The monitor registered agitation in McAlister. "He won't like it."

"I don't care if he likes it."

"He'll jump s.h.i.+p."

Pamela didn't think so. "By his own admission, he can't afford to just now."

"He won't like having his toy might taken away."

"He hasn't got time for a temper tantrum."

"You don't know him very well."

Who did know Sorli? McAlister had worked with him more closely than anyone Pamela knew of. Had she pegged Sorli right on this one?

Mike Powers clucked his tongue as he listened to the announcer. G.o.d above, what was the world coming to? Used to be that you only heard that sort of trash on the tabloid channels. Dragon men from outer s.p.a.ce! Who believed that c.r.a.p?

He hit the remote and called up the Astrology Channel. Sh.e.l.li Crystal was breezing and jiggling her way through Virgo, so he wouldn't have long to wait for his horoscope. Sh.e.l.li didn't do the 'scopes herself, she had a staff for that; but Mike didn't mind, Sh.e.l.li put on a good show.

Something thumped on the balcony. With the windows bianked Mike couldn't see what it was, but he figured it was Ms. Colomo's cat knocking over his flowerpots again. Stirring himself, he hauled his ma.s.s out of the chair. If he caught the d.a.m.ned beast he'd pitch it off the balcony. That'd teach Ms. Colomo to let her animal intrude on people's G.o.d-given privacy.

He slid open the door and saw the broken pot immediately. But he didn't see the cat. All he saw was the sharp, sharp teeth in the snout that thrust at him.

"There's no one there," Spae said as they pulled up.

Holger shut off the engine. He didn't like this car as much as the one they'd had in Worcester. That seemed appropriate; he didn't like being in the sprawl proper as much as he'd liked its exurb satellite-and he hadn't liked Mitsutomo's version of Worcester much at all.

"Wait here anyway," he told her.

"I thought you always wanted backup."

"This is just reconnaissance."