June, 2003
Bellingham, WA
The strident whoop of the smoke alarm jolted
Michelle Jessec to her feet.
She started coughing immediately, though she
must have been breathing the hazy, acrid air for several minutes without
it registering
on her awareness or her lungs in the slightest.
It was thickest toward the kitchen, and as
she hurried that way she remembered the grilled cheese sandwich.
BREEEE-BREEEE-BREEEE!
Only the fact that she knew what it was because
she’d put it there made the remains in the frying pan identifiable. Another
observer
might have first mistaken it for a piece of ceramic tile, probably
the sort of thing they used on the Space Shuttle to keep it from burning
up on re-entry. It was square, it was coal-black, and when she jabbed
at it with the knife she’d used to slice the cheese, it was like trying
to stab cinderblock.
Michelle turned off the burner and bundled
her hands in oven mitts before carrying the whole pan out the back door.
A steady rain
was falling, and hissed vigorously as drops fell on the hot metal.
She set it down on one of the cement stepping stones that formed a path
to the shed at the rear of the property. More baleful hisses drifted
up.
She stood with her head bowed, feeling the
water soak into her hair and run down the back of her neck. Only the insistent
BREEE-ing
from inside, barely muted by the thin walls of the duplex, prevented
her from slipping back into the dull-eyed state that she’d been in a few
moments before.
With an effort, she lifted her head to the
sky. Striations of dark grey, and if not for the oblong of light around
her from the open door
and the other one spilling from the living-room window, she could have
been on another planet or in another time.
The duplex was in a wooded, hilly neighborhood
that was technically still part of Bellingham despite being a twenty-minute
drive from
the center of the town proper. Aside from a tiny store that seemed
to make more money from its espresso bar and dirty video rentals than
from the meager shelves of groceries, there wasn’t a business establishment
for five miles in any direction.
Most of the houses were hidden from the wandering
‘road’ and looked like what first came to mind when one thought of survivalist
hideouts. There had been a push a few years back to expand the area,
building apartments and duplexes to lodge the college students, but
Michelle’s duplex was one of the only ones that had been successfully
built before the idea died on the vine. It was at the easternmost edge
of anything, and beyond her small backyard was nothing but woods and
wildlands where few but the hikers dared to tread.
She let the rain wash her face the way her
tears should have if she’d been able to release her tears. Now water was
running down the
front of her neck and into her blouse, soaking it.
And the macrosphere in her breast pocket --
Michelle grimaced and dashed back inside,
hastily pulling the sphere out and shaking it back and forth as if that
would do anything helpful.
Her fingers slipped on the wet metal ball and it flew across the room,
hit the dishwasher, rebounded, and rolled under the breakfast nook.
She scrambled after it, making muttering noises
of worry and self-disgust under her breath.
Where was the fucking thing?
Oh, there, in the corner ... in a deep nest
of dust bunnies. Very nice.
The macrosphere, so called because it was
too big to be properly called a microsphere, was the size of an aggie marble.
Its intricate circuitry
was hidden beneath a layer of fluff and grit.
She retrieved it and blew on it, which triggered
a sneezing fit as dust bunnies swarmed around her. Kerchooing like a hound
dog, Michelle
squirmed out from under the table and sat in the middle of the floor
with the sphere cradled in the palm of her hand.
“Dummy,” she murmured. “What if you broke
it?”
That was a question she didn’t need to ask.
But there was nothing to be done for it if she had, because fixing something
like this went far
beyond her skills. Even using it and the information it contained
was pushing the limit of everything she’d learned in eight years as a practicing
physicist.
Holding it with exaggerated care as if that
might make up for first dousing it and then dropping it, Michelle went
back to the living room. On
the way, she only paused long enough to rip the smoke detector off
the ceiling and hurl it against the wall:
BREEE-crunch!-breep-breep-breep ...
She kicked it, dislodging the battery, and
the final breep became a broogh, which trailed into welcome
silence.
The things one would usually associate with
a room by that name were nowhere to be seen. No couch, no television. Between
her computer
workstation, packed bookshelves on every wall, and the other equipment
she used when she worked at home, it was more like a science lab
or cluttered professor’s office.
She didn’t mind. She never entertained, and
on the rare occasions when she felt like relaxing in front of the tube,
she had a little portable
TV-and-VCR in the bedroom closet.
The macrosphere drive was a new addition,
not yet hooked up to her own computer. It came with an attached laptop,
and every piece and
component was clearly marked with a company logo. Not the Everstar
logo, not the company for which Michelle had been working since right
out of grad school at the precocious age of 21. This one was unfamiliar,
a gold ‘C’ that widened in the middle so that it resembled a crescent
moon.
Feeling both resigned and fearful, Michelle
opened the top of the sphere drive. Inside the black box was a weblike
suspension of sparkly
grey foamlike fabric with a depression in it the exact size as the
sphere.
Why had she been keeping it in her pocket
anyway? She knew better than to treat a piece of expensive tech like that,
even if it came from
Mirano.
But that was why she’d had it in her pocket.
Mirano handled the sphere with the awe and reverence of a pilgrim with
a holy relic, and by
stuffing it in her pocket she’d been trying to show her indifference.
To show that he, his company, and his project meant that little to her.
That
she’d take a look, sure, out of professional curiosity, but nothing
he could say would convince her to sign on with Coalition Technologies
Inc.
And then, after he’d said something that utterly
convinced her, she’d been too out of it to think straight. Hence the cremated
grilled cheese
sandwich.
She’d been sitting stunned for hours, in a
weird state of panicked lethargy, burning with the urge to get up, call
someone, do something,
and hobbled by the knowledge that there was nothing she could do, no
one who could help her, and such a course of action would have only
led to worse.
Finally, concluding that some food might help
clear her head and make a decision, she’d gone in and thrown together the
sandwich. And
then her gaze had fallen on the drawings that covered the fridge, Toby’s
drawings of dragons and gargoyles and fanciful creatures, and she’d
fled the kitchen unable to look at them. From there, she’d sunk back
into her slump while her dinner charred.
I understand your hesitation, Dr. Jessec
... it’s not easy to consider career changes at a time of family tragedy
like this ...
She could hear him now, in her mind, as clearly
as if he was still standing in front of her in his sharp midnight blue
suit with the gold lapel pin
in the shape of the C. That voice, cool and smooth as a mouthful of
silk. That expression of false sympathy, with the cruel light dancing in
his
eyes.
Mirano had been flanked by his two silent
associates, whose suits only emphasized how hard it was to get men that
mesomorphic into
suits. All she could remember about their expressionless faces were
mirrored copglasses and jaws so firm Schwarzenegger might have been
envious.
Oh, how she hadn’t wanted to ask! But how
could she not? He would have told her anyway, she knew that, but would
let her hang as long
as it amused him.
A fire. On the boat. Late last night, as Ron
and Toby were on their way home from Seattle. Accidental, of course ...
no one would ever have
reason to suspect otherwise.
But the first thing Mirano’s people would
do if she didn’t cooperate would be to let Mom and Dad find just how accidental
it hadn’t been,
and whose fault it was.
Then, when they were busy blaming their daughter
for killing their son and only grandchild, the senior Jessecs would find
a similar ‘accident’
happening to them ... a sadistic burglar, maybe, who decided to have
some fun by killing the old couple slowly ... and they’d die knowing whose
fault that was as well.
Michelle dropped into her chair and used vacuum
brushes and dust-attractant wipes to do all she could for the macrosphere.
When it was as
clean as she thought she could get it, she mentally crossed her fingers
and inserted it into the drive, closing the lid.
Her spine went limp with relief when it still
worked. A quick diagnostic showed that no damage had been done, or at least
nothing that she
could recognize.
She supposed she should see just what was
on this sphere, what project had been worth murdering two people and threatening
two more to
bring her on board. But she couldn’t concentrate, could barely think.
Her head was full of images of Ron and Toby ... but whenever she
conjured images of them, all she could see was what it must have been
like as the Jessica went up in flames.
Choking down a sob -- she would not
cry, she had never cried, she’d survived all her years of school
tormented by being the youngest in
her class without giving in to tears, she’d weathered Andrew’s death
two days before their wedding with dry eyes, she could get through this
as
well -- Michelle abandoned her chair and hurried to her bedroom.
She fell to her knees and flipped up the spread,
rooting around underneath the bed until she found a heavy cardboard box
full of loose
photographs. She kept meaning to put them in albums but never found
the time, and the longer she went, the bigger and more daunting the job
became.
The ones she wanted were right on top. Last
December, when she had taken a rare two weeks off from work and gone home
for a good
old-fashioned holiday with the family. Or as close to one as it could
have been, since her parents had moved from their massive old house in
Chicago to a one-story rambler in Arizona. Made for quite a difference,
but it hadn’t mattered all that much once they were all gathered under
one roof.
Here were the photos. Herself and Ron, both
wearing goofy Santa hats, hugging in front of the tree and sticking their
tongues out at the camera.
Toby on the couch between his grandparents, grinning like mad. The
one Dad took using the timer, all of them around a tacky cardboard fireplace
preparing to hang their stockings. One of her and Toby throwing wadded-up
balls of wrapping paper at each other in lieu of snowballs ...
Michelle’s heart crumpled in her chest like
an aluminum can caught in a large fist. She stared down at the image of
her nephew, seeing herself
in Toby and feeling her future wither and die. They had the same color
of hair, the same mirthful crinkling around the eyes when having a good
time.
And now he was gone. Now Ron was gone,
and that seemed impossible. Ron had always been there. He’d been several
years older than her,
enough so that he was never forced to let her tag along by their parents.
So many years, in fact, that they should have been strangers. Instead,
she’d
idolized him, and he had never been anything but proud of her. Even
when she’d been skipped ahead so many times, entering high school at ten
and
graduating at thirteen. “My baby sister the genius,” he’d said, puffed
with pride.
She turned up another photo, and winced. Herself
sitting sidesaddle on the low stone wall in front of Mom and Dad’s house,
looking pensively
at a desert sunset that lost only a little by being in black and white.
That one was going to be the jacket photo for Ron’s next book, the one
due
out in October.
Did his agent and publisher know yet? Did
anyone know yet but her? Seen as how Mirano’s information was so timely
as to be damn near
precognitive ... the son of a bitch!
When her brother had first come up with the
idea of a pseudonym, Michelle had agreed to pose as ‘Jessica Reynolds’
for the author photo,
thinking it would be a just-once sort of thing. A funny little in-joke
among the family.
None of them had counted on Jessica’s career
taking off, and for each of the subsequent books, Michelle had agreed to
be in the picture. She
drew the line, though, at signings and appearances. Much to Ron’s agent’s
annoyance. He kept plaguing them with suggestions. A horror convention
in St. Louis. A book expo in San Francisco. And if he had his way,
Michelle would find herself on a stage wearing a plunging Elvira-dress,
vamping
it up.
No more of that. The new book would be the
last one. In a way, three people had died in that fire. Jessica
Reynolds was no more.
Michelle stuffed the pictures back in the
box and crept onto the bed, wrapping herself around her misery the way
a child might wrap around a
favorite doll.
She would not cry. Not for her much-loved
brother, not for her cherished nephew, certainly not for a pseudonym.
Telling herself that, she failed to notice
the tears that streamed down her face to dampen her pillow, and eventually
fell into the sleep of the
thoroughly emotionally exhausted.
**
It was as a much more composed and alert Michelle
Jessec that she approached her computer the next evening.
She’d slept for seventeen hours, waking only
once at the nagging ring of the phone. That call had been from her supervisor,
Dr. Lundquist,
sounding harried and snappish, but evidently Michelle’s blurry mumblings
about being sick and oversleeping were convincing enough. She’d
then unplugged the phone and crawled back in bed.
Emerging at dusk, she felt like her head had
been hollowed out and filled with whipped cream. Shock had numbed her so
much that she didn’t
remember Mirano’s visit or his bad news until she staggered into the
kitchen and found the back door wide open, streaky raccoon-prints on the
floor, and a soggy blackish mess swimming in the frying pan in the
yard.
It had all come back then, cascading in on
her with relentless clarity, but Michelle held herself together by pure
willpower.
Now, two hours later, the kitchen was in order
and she was showered and dressed and feeling more like a human and less
like a flesh scarecrow.
She plugged the phone back in and called Dr.
Lundquist at home, apologizing for her absence and failure to get in touch
sooner. Would she be
in tomorrow? Probably not ... could they get by for a few days without
her?
Dr. Lundquist sighed like the weight of the
world was just transferred to her shoulders.
“Well, Michelle, you know how short-handed
we’ve been since Gerald left.”
Michelle flinched; Gerald Smythe had quit
Everstar with no notice and less explanation, and gone to work for Coalition.
She wondered for the
first time what extra incentive might have been behind his defection
... and her stomach rolled queasily when she thought about his twin daughters
at Stanford.
“I’ll try,” Michelle said. “I’m really sorry,
Anna.”
“Well, feel better ... don’t overdo it.”
They exchanged meaningless pleasantries and
hung up, and then Michelle pulled the plug on the phone again before it
could ring. Because sooner
or later it would. It would ring with the news that wasn’t news to
her, either delivered by someone in an official capacity (bad) or by Mom
(worse).
At the moment, she couldn’t handle either.
Her stomach was raving like a beast, though
her appetite was apparently nonexistent. She grabbed the first thing she
saw in the pantry, a can
of Campbell’s something-or-other, and dumped it into a saucepan. While
it heated, she considered taking another crack at grilled cheese but settled
for slicing up an apple and scooping a dollop of peanut butter onto
the plate.
She cooked the soup without burning it, but
quickly realized she’d forgotten to add a can of water and was ingesting
concentrated Chicken and
Rice. The strong taste reminded her of the time she’d eaten a bullion
cube on a dare.
Eventually, she got it right and discovered
her appetite after all. The food vanished with a haste that was unseemly
when Ron and Toby would
never take another bite, and Michelle felt pangs of guilt for being
able to eat, to taste, to feel comfortably warm and full.
After piling the dishes in the sink, she went
to her computer and turned on the laptop to see exactly what was on the
sphere that had cost her the
lives of her brother and nephew.
Five minutes later, she was perplexed.
Ten minutes after that, she was astounded.
When an hour had gone by, she was utterly
engrossed, and excited stirrings of discovery had driven everything else
to the back recesses of her
mind.
She stayed where she was, riveted, stirring
only to fish the occasional can of diet soda from the mini-fridge beside
the filing cabinet.
By the time she finished reviewing the material
on the sphere, it was full dark and her bladder was about to burst. She’d
been unaware of the
growing discomfort but now it was a demandingly urgent need, forcing
her to scurry to the bathroom in rapid mincing steps.
Relief. A personal promise never again to
drink five cans of soda at a single sitting.
When that business was attended to, she washed
her hands and stared into her reflected eyes as if to ask herself if she
believed what she’d found
out.
Another person might have said it was impossible,
but Michelle knew better, knew that when it came to science, the word ‘yet’
always had to be
tacked on to any protestation of what couldn’t be done.
But if they’d done it ... the world would
never be the same again.
And they wanted her to be a part of
it!
Michelle screamed and snatched up her blow
dryer, and swung it with all her might. It smashed the mirror dead-center
and glass exploded outward
in thick black-backed shards.
“You bastards!” she yelled, whirling to fling
the dryer into the tub. “If you’d only told me --”
If they’d only told her! If they’d only made
it clear what they were working on, what they wanted to do, what breakthroughs
they’d already
achieved ... if they’d done that, wild horses couldn’t have kept her
from being a part of their project!
But no! Corporate paranoia, tell no one anything
until they’ve signed and bound themselves by more oaths than a medieval
knight! Force them
to agree or refuse blindly, in ignorance!
Kill people, when there was no need!
She clawed at the shower curtain and tore
it free in a series of vinyl-ripping pops. The plastic rings rattled and
chattered on the metal bar, sounding
like surprised squirrels. Michelle bundled the curtain into a ball
and threw it on the floor. All the items on the windowsill followed --
shampoo, body
wash, bubble bath.
The furious fit abated as suddenly as it had
begun, leaving her gaping in astonishment at the wreckage of her bathroom.
Rather than try to tidy it,
she shut the door behind her and went straight to the kitchen, where
she removed the package of double-thick Oreos from her hiding place behind
the microwave -- why she felt the need to hide them when she was the
only one here was a mystery she’d never solved. She sat down at the dinky
table and plowed into them.
Several cookies later, she had gotten herself
back under control enough to wonder if she had any milk left. As she was
rising to get it, the door
in the other half of the duplex slammed resoundingly. The spice rack
over the stove shook, and the marjoram and basil jumped ship.
Michelle shook her head, and then sourly reminded
herself that she’d thrown a hell of a ruckus in the bathroom a few minutes
ago, so who was
she to bitch if the neighbors made some noise? Wasn’t like it was the
first time ... the other side of the duplex was rented by a quartet of
college kids
in some sort of relationship-arrangement that had always eluded her,
and when they weren’t partying, they were arguing. Made her wonder how
they’d
lasted until finals ...
Wait ...
She paused with a container of spices in each
hand.
Finals were over. The students had moved out,
gone their separate ways for the summer.
The other side of the duplex was empty.
Or was supposed to be ...
thud ... rattle.
Footsteps, echoing on hardwood floors in empty
rooms.
Suddenly wary, Michelle exchanged the basil
and marjoram for a steak knife. She’d feel pretty silly if it was the landlord
come to show prospective
new tenants the place, moreso because they might have arrived to hear
her carrying on and destroying her bathroom, but ...
The clock assured her that it was after midnight.
Her sense of time had been folded, spindled, and mutilated by the events
of the past day, so she
had trouble believing it. But the blue glowing numbers on the microwave
agreed with the clock.
Not even her landlord would bring someone
around to look at the property this late.
click ... click ... click-click.
That metallic noise was very familiar, the
attempted turning of a locked doorknob.
Michelle, feeling much less silly now and
wondering if the steak knife would prove to be adequate or if she should
have gone for the big bread knife,
tiptoed to the connecting door through the duplex’s shared wall. She
could feel a presence on the other side, whether through hearing or scent
or a
combination of all her senses, she neither knew nor cared.
click! A sharp, angry sound.
Fine time to remember she’d unplugged her
phone ...
In addition to the lock in the knob, the door
featured a chain lock on either side. But Michelle’s wasn’t in use.
Barely daring to breathe, she picked up the
dangly end and brought it close to the brass slot. It went in with the
faintest of scrapes and clunks, surely
nothing that could have been heard through the thickness of the door,
but she knew whoever it was had heard, was now waiting in the dark
with head
cocked alertly to one side, maybe with nostrils flared ...
That was stupid ... this wasn’t one of her
brother’s novels. If there was someone on the other side, it was a person.
Maybe a robber, maybe a
Coalition thug here to reinforce her agreement with a threat or scare,
but certainly nothing else.
And then, a voice pitched very low: “Michelle!”
Her grip tightened and she said nothing.
“Michelle, it’s me ... Gerald! Gerald Smythe!
Are you there? I know you’re there!”
Gerald?
But it did sound like him ... that cultured
voice that didn’t have an English accent even though it seemed like it
should, an effect that was even
stronger considering his name and the way he looked.
“Gerald?” she hissed.
“Michelle, thank God you’re here! Are they
here?”
Renewed suspicion coiled through her. “Who?”
she asked, though she knew.
“Anyone from the Coalition. I know they’ve
been in touch with you. Please, Michelle, I’ve got to talk to you, is it
safe?”
His genuine distress settled it; she undid
the chain and unlocked the door. But as it opened, she backed off and held
the knife at her side, muscles
tensed and ready to bring it up fast if it proved to be a trick.
Gerald Smythe came in, and as the light hit
him, Michelle’s eyes widened.
Only a moment ago she’d been thinking how
he looked like he ought to sound British. And he usually did. Tall, lean,
with aristocratic features and
salt-and-pepper hair, the sort of man who gave the impression of having
been born knowing how to wear a cravat and how to choose a good cognac.
That Gerald Smythe bore so little resemblance
to the man in her kitchen that Michelle was tempted to believe it wasn’t
him at all. Easier to think
that than to see Gerald like this!
He was gaunt, the bones of his skull prominently
visible beneath skin that was stretched tight yet somehow seemed flaccid
and doughy at the same
time. His eyes were the same robin’s egg blue they had always been,
but the receding flesh around them made them appear to bulge from his head.
His hair was tangled, his cheeks and chin
rough with stubble -- could this be the same Gerald Smythe who kept an
electric razor in his desk so he
didn’t have to go home with five o’clock shadow?
“Gerald, what’s happened to you?” Michelle
blurted.
“Don’t come too close. I don’t know if there’s
a contagion effect.”
The word stopped her in her tracks. “Contagion?!”
“And I don’t know how much time I have.”
“Is someone looking for you? The Coalition?”
“Oh, probably ... would that that were the
worst of it, but they’re the least of my concern. As far as my personal
well-being goes, that is. It’s what
they’ll want from you that worries me. That’s why I’m here.
I had to chance it. Michelle, have they gotten to you?”
She nodded. “I told them I wasn’t interested,
but --”
“They gave you incentive,” he said sourly.
“Yes, I know.”
“Krissy and Katie?”
“No ... my dog, Gretel.”
“Your dog?” Michelle said in disbelief.
“They tortured her, left her where I’d be
the one to find her. And explained that the same mutilations would happen
to my girls. I had no choice.”
“Only a dog? They killed my brother,
my nephew!”
“They need you. At once. To pick up my work,
take over for me.”
“What? You left their project? But what about
your daughters? How can you keep them safe from these kind of people?”
“It’s not that. As far as they know, I’m in
the Tank. I was sick ... we were all sick, everyone on my team. We caught
something when they activated
it. It ...”
“It works? Gerald, you mean you did it? It
works?”
“Too well.” He shuddered as if his body was
seized by a giant and shaken. “Something came through, Michelle. It ...
infected us. My memory’s a
fog ... I can only remember eyes. Red eyes in the gloom. They sent
us to the Tank for observation. The medical people said we should be quarantined
for a month at least.”
“And they don’t want to wait that long when
they think they’ve seen success,” Michelle said, knowing all too well how
some scientists operated. “So
they want me to come in and cover for you. When did this happen?”
“Four days ago.”
She took an involuntary step back. “Why’d
they let you out.”
“They ... they didn’t. I don’t know how I
got out. I was in my cell, and then everything came over all murky, and
the next thing I knew, I was outside.
On the road. I didn’t know where else to go, so I came here to warn
you. Michelle, don’t do what they want.”
“I don’t have any choice either, Gerald! My
parents will be next if I back out now, and I’ll probably join them!”
“Believe me, you’d be better off. What we
saw ...” he broke off, trembling so violently that he fell against the
wall. “We can’t let it out! We can’t let
it happen! No matter what the cost!” He slumped to the floor, clutching
his head.
“We can stop them! We can get you to a hospital,
let everyone know what the Coalition’s been doing, and it’ll stop! There
won’t be any point in
getting rid of us then.”
“Don’t ...” he gurgled. “Don’t open it! Ahh
... God ...”
His hair went white. Michelle knew, thanks
to Ron, that it didn’t really happen that way, that terror loosened the
follicles so the darker hairs fell out,
leaving the lighter ones and the grey, but that was exactly not
what happened to Gerald.
His hair went white. It changed, from
the scalp out, as if paint was being pumped through each individual strand.
Agonized noises that sounded like speech came
from his throat as he tried to cram himself into the corner, but it made
no sense to her. “Necrivoria ...
not ... our ... moon!”
His skin went white.
Not pale.
White.
“Gerald?”
He convulsed, and slowly raised his head with
his hands over his face. When he spoke, it was with tremendous effort,
forcing the words out. “Run ...
for the love of God, run!”
Michelle quite calmly decided that she was
dreaming. Simple. Had fallen asleep at the computer and was dreaming this
entire sequence. The stress
of the past couple of days. Sure.
Gerald dropped his hands.
The world stopped turning, time froze in place.
She had a year or more to look at him. To
note with clinical accuracy how his robin’s egg eyes had turned red and
merged into a single socket above
a nose that had melted into two sideways grooves for nostrils. And
below that, his mouth ... a lamprey-like ring of small but sharp teeth.
In slow motion,
his mouth opened wider, showing her that there were more rings of teeth,
rows of them, and the agile gums could flex them outward in a seeking circle
of points.
The nostrils flared, and she remembered how
she’d chided herself at the door that this wasn’t something out of one
of her brother’s books.
Now she knew it was far weirder, and much
worse!
As Gerald began to straighten up, those sucking
rows of teeth protruding in her direction more obscenely than anything
she could ever have imagined,
she understood in a flash that this was no dream. No matter how much
she might wish for it to be.
All the same, as she ran for the back door
she expected to move with the sluggish pace of a dream, so it surprised
her when she covered the distance
in a heartbeat. She wrenched the door open and raked it shut behind
her to buy a second or two. Enough moonlight filtered through the clouds
to let her
avoid the worst puddles, but she still splashed up huge fans of muddy
water racing to the gate.
Which was padlocked.
And she had no key. Had never needed one,
because the only thing back there was a tangle of woods leading to a gully
so steep it almost qualified as
a chasm.
The back door spun across the yard like a
propeller and caved in the side of the shed.
The thing that had been Gerald filled the
opening.
Michelle had never considered herself much
of a fence climber until now. She monkeyed up the planks, and promptly
snagged her pants on a nail. She
gouged her leg pulling free, sprained her wrist falling.
Wheezing in near-panic, she risked a look
back over the fence, sure that he’d be right on top of her ready to drag
her down and bite.
He was gone.
No, there he was, hunkered down by the back
door of the other side of the duplex’s kitchen. Digging with his bare hands,
making frantic grunts of
need.
She knew this was the perfect time
to make her getaway. Around the house, into her car, and gone while praising
herself for never having given in
to the distrust that said she shouldn’t leave her keys under the floormat.
But what was he doing ...?
Gerald came up with a tattered bundle about
the size of a leg of lamb, wrapped in a towel. He shredded the towel in
his haste to get at the contents.
Pussy Galore.
Her neighbors’ cat. Pussy had been hit by
a car the week before finals, and they’d held a kitty funeral.
Necrivoria ... though she’d never heard the
term before, as Michelle saw Gerald plunge his rows of teeth into the rotting
haunch of the dead cat, she
got it. Herbivore, carnivore, omnivore ... necivore ...
Morbid revulsion held her in place as Gerald
scarfed up his grisly feast. It took him two minutes to reduce what had
been a very portly cat to nothing
but bones. Then his head swung around and that red cyclopean eye found
her as if she was lit up.
He let go of the carcass and gave chase, being
halfway to the fence by the time Pussy Galore’s bones hit the ground.
Michelle didn’t waste breath screaming. She
fled for the corner and rounded it, and there he was! Springing over the
fence with uncanny agility,
having anticipated her move!
She reversed and surrendered to her flight
impulse. Straight ahead, no plan, just running, just trying to escape.
The Gerald-thing sped after her,
gaining.
Too late, she remembered the gully.
The land sloped away beneath her feet. This
was a descent she wouldn’t have tried on the best of days, not even picking
her way down one foothold
at a time, and here she was charging headlong down slick and slippery
mud.
She would have been doomed even without the
fallen log ...
Her left leg struck it and she was airborne,
pitched violently up and out toward the snarled scrub, rocks, and deadwood
lining the lower reached of
the gully.
She hit hard, slamming into what felt like
a solid brick wall. Her breath coughed out from the impact, her head snapped
forward on a whiplashed
neck, and her eyes took in a view that her dizzied brain couldn’t comprehend.
Then, with a small moan, Michelle fainted.
**
Hippolyta came up on deck to find that the
argument she’d been expecting since sunset yesterday had finally come to
pass. The delay, what with
hurriedly packing Ron and Toby and most of their belongings aboard
the Mists’ Passage, their hasty departure, and a full night’s sailing
through
storm-tossed seas to find a secluded cove where they could shelter
the day, hadn’t left much time for discussion.
Tonight, though, the waters were calm and
the rain had ended, and they were almost to their destination.
“We should have left that very night!” Ezekiel
was saying.
“We had no reason,” Corwin replied.
“Because you neglected to tell us --”
“I didn’t recall until it was too late! By
then, dawn was upon us!”
“He was distracted by his injury and the medicine,”
Cassius pointed out. “As was I. Neither of us could see much past the healing
of stone.”
Tourmaline scowled. “Still, to greet us at
dusk’s awakening with the news that a third assassin had been there, watching
all the while ...”
“It’s a wonder reinforcements didn’t return
to shatter us as we slept and finish their mission of killing the man and
the boy!” Ezekiel said.
“Their names are Ron and Toby,” Hippolyta
interjected. “They have names, brother, even as we do.”
“Well, if we had been attacked in our sleep,
I would have shouldered the blame,” Corwin said.
“Fine good that would do us --” Ezekiel broke
off and glowered at Corwin as he belatedly deciphered the sarcasm.
“We left as soon as we were able,” Icarus
said. “What is, is. We are away now, and it is pointless to worry about
what didn’t come to pass.”
“Then can we worry about what’s yet to come?”
Tourmaline asked archly. “This notion of yours is madness, Corwin.”
“To reunite a family, and put a stop to an
evil band of villains?” Corwin winked. “Well, then, if that be madness,
then so be it.”
“Are you so eager to face them again?” She
poked him high on the side of the chest, smooth golden skin that had only
two nights ago been a
ravaged exit wound.
Corwin winced as if it was still tender, but
didn’t lose his easy grin. “We’re gargoyles, aren’t we?”
“Are you saying I am less than gargoyle?”
Tourmaline’s eyes slitted coldly.
“No, no, never that!” he assured her. “I’m
merely surprised you agreed. I thought you might object more strenuously
to bringing them with us.”
“Object? Whatever for? Because half my clan
insists on adopting a man and a boy we’ve only just met? Because we’re
taking on their enemies
as our own? Tell me, to what could I possibly object?”
“Their enemies are our own,” Hippolyta
said. “I brought them upon us. This one that escaped would have known how
his fellows met their doom --”
“Nay, sister,” Corwin said. “We’ve been through
this.”
“And yet it is not over!”
She spun from them and loped to the stern
of the ship. But the Mists’ Passage was not a large enough vessel
to remove her from earshot, and
the words of her clan still carried clearly to her.
“The man Jessec, he killed one of them
as well,” she heard Tourmaline say. “And he does not weep and wring his
hands in despair.”
“He is numbed with shock,” Cassius said. “Even
now he seems barely conscious of where he is and what’s happened. I doubt
me he even
remembers the deed.”
Tourmaline snorted in exasperation. “Obviously
... the way he threw himself on his foe, it could have just as easily been
his neck to break, or
the knife he held could have gotten twisted and skewered his
eye. Had one of us been so clumsy in battle, it would have brought shame
on the
entire clan.”
“I still want to know why we’re interfering
in human business,” Ezekiel pressed. “We could just leave these two --”
“They welcomed us as friends!” Corwin said.
“After we saved their lives.”
“They helped Corwin and I when we were wounded,”
Cassius added.
“Wounded saving their lives.”
Corwin exhaled in annoyance. “Avalon sent
us here to help them. Should we abandon our quest?”
“I will not be at Avalon’s beck and call,”
Icarus rumbled. “We do what we must and what we feel is right, that’s
all. Nothing is meant, nothing
is destined.”
“No, Corwin’s words make sense,” Cassius protested.
“We know the magic of the isle and have seen it at work. Did it not send
great Goliath
on many missions?”
“But if so, how far does our quest here extend?”
Tourmaline said. “We’ve already saved the man and boy. Perhaps that is
all we were meant to
do, and we presume too much by seeking the woman.”
“She’s in danger,” Cassius chuckled. “And
far be it from us to ignore a damsel in distress!”
“Oh, very well,” Tourmaline sighed. “We cannot
avoid all humans, for they own the world and if we are to live within it,
surely we’ll have to get
used to dealing with them.”
“They’re not so bad,” Corwin said.
“They are weak and insignificant,” she countered.
“But I find more in them to pity than to despise, and so we shall not leave
them to their fate
when they so obviously need our help.”
Her announcement ended the discussion, and
the group split up. Icarus returned to the helm while Tourmaline consulted
the nautical map that was
allegedly to tell them the way to the land called Bellingham. Cassius
returned below to check on Toby and his ailing father. Ezekiel went with
him. And
Corwin approached Hippolyta, where she stood watching the rolling waves.
“Sister? As Cassius said, ‘tis unfitting to
ignore a damsel in distress.”
“I am not in distress, Corwin.”
“Not of the body, but of the spirit.” He rested
his hands on her shoulders, turning her to face him. “I cannot know what
this has been like for you --”
“No, you cannot! No one can! For it is worse
than I’ve let on, brother! Far worse!”
“Why? Sweet Hippolyta, why?”
She stared at the deck planking, unable to
meet his eyes as she spoke. “Because it felt good. Such a thrill
went through me as I cannot describe!
When I shot him, and I saw how perfectly to the mark my arrows had
gone, I was flushed with pride. And when he fell, pouring his life’s blood,
I felt
such a savage joy that I wanted to shriek it to the stars ... but at
the same moment was awash in the most hideous horror I’ve ever known! How
can
it be horror and joy in one?”
“It was power, and it was frightening.” He
tried to pull her against his broad chest but she resisted, wrapping her
wings around herself as a barrier
against her shame. “All power must be like that to some extent. Wasn’t
it so when our clan first discovered matings? Much more joy than horror,
I
grant thee ...”
The tone of his voice brought a faint and
unwilling smile to her lips. “But a frightening new power, yes, I remember.”
“I think there’s no shame in being proud of
your skill. It had to be done, after all, and if something has to be done,
better that it is done well! You
are a fine warrior, one of the best of our clan. Take pride in that,
sister, do ... because I know you are no heartless killer. These tears
you try to hide
prove that distinctly.”
“Will you say the same when it is your turn,
Corwin?”
“I can’t know until it happens, but I hope
I feel the same things you do. I hope that when it is my turn, my foe is
one who, like yours, has it coming.
Those men were murderers, or would have been had we not intervened
... and probably were beforehand, for they treated it as a matter of course.”
“How is it that you never seem to have doubts?
How is it that you seem so much older and wiser than the rest of us, when
you were hatched no
sooner?”
Corwin shrugged. “Perhaps it is that I had
my doubts early on, when the rest of you were always so certain. And now
I have resolved them, while
you are discovering yours.” He tried again to embrace her, and this
time she let herself be drawn into his arms.
“I am afraid,” she admitted.
“Not of me, surely,” he teased gently, kissing
her on the brow ridge.
“Of the next time I must fight. Suppose I
come to like it too much, to crave that thrill and have the horror diminish?
To become ruthless and violent,
merciless? To be ... to be like Demona?”
He frowned pensively, and glanced briefly
over his shoulder. In that moment, as clearly as if he’d said it aloud,
she knew what he was thinking --
if any are in danger of that, it is not you.
But instead of saying so, Corwin stepped back,
stooped down, and peered intently into her eyes. “Did the Magus ever tell
you that a gargoyle’s
eyes are like Seeing Stones to their soul? And that he taught me how
to read the signs therein?”
“Somehow he never mentioned it,” she said,
almost grinning despite herself, loving him for cheering her out of her
melancholy.
“And I see no anger in you, sister-mine. Neither
do I see bitterness, or hatred.”
“What do you see?”
“Someone bright and beautiful as a star, quick
and clever as a hawk, and above all, loyal and good-hearted.”
“You’ve been spending too much time in the
company of Lady Titania, brother. It’s made you even more charming.” She
laughed, shakily but
genuine, and held him tightly. “What a mate you might have made, had
things been different!”
He laughed too. “Careful, you might damage
your standing as an avowed Amazonian! But then, even your namesake queen
was eventually tamed
by a male ... ‘tis your good fortune that the Magus named none of us
Theseus!”
“It would take more than a mere coincidence
of names to tame me!” she cried in mock indignation, swiping at
him with her tail.
“What would it take?” inquired Corwin
with an exaggeratedly speculative grin. “A bit of nibbling on the wing
joints?”
“I chose matelessness, not chastity!”
“That makes two of us.”
“But since you mention it, I think one other
task we should set ourselves is to find out just precisely what
it was that our ancestors did with their
tails. I heard Coyote and Mai jesting about it, and wonder what we’ve
been miss -- Corwin?” She interrupted herself at his expression, which
was
knowing and embarrassed and smug all in one. “You know, don’t you?”
“I ... er ... stumbled across it once.”
Before she could ask her next question --
which was to ask why the sly creature had kept it a secret from the rest
of them -- Tourmaline hailed
them with the news that they’d spotted a likely, hidden docking-place.
“You’ll have to tell me later,” Hippolyta
said, in a way that let Corwin know she’d brook no debate.
It was decided after a brief conference that
Icarus would remain behind to guard the ship and look after Ron, while
Toby guided them. Poor Ron
was unsuited even to take care of himself, let alone his son. Since
the night of the attack, he had been sleeping nearly as solidly, and half
again as much,
as a gargoyle.
Hippolyta could sympathize, and wished that
she could seek refuge in dreamless slumber from the images that would haunt
her for the rest of her life.
No matter how she justified it, no matter how she understood that it
had to be done, that it had been the right and only thing to do,
she would never
forget the look on the man’s face as he’d clutched in agony at the
arrow piercing his torso.
It must have been a hundred times worse for
Ron. A peaceful man, untrained and unprepared. Who had previously killed
only in his fiction. Lashing
out in a frenzy of anguish. Falling atop the body and feeling the shudder
of Agent Shaw’s body as death set in, smelling the sour outrush of his
final breath.
Young Toby had been struggling bravely and
manfully to take care of his father and behave like an adult, although
any child in such a situation would
have been well within rights to fuss and tantrum and complain. Perhaps
he might have, had he not been so fascinated by the fact that his companions
were
gargoyles. He wanted to show them he was a good and worthy friend.
Most of all, he didn’t want to ruin his chances of going for a glide.
He showed them a photo of his aunt. Michelle
Jessec was a small woman but busty, and younger than they expected. Toby
explained how she had
finished her schooling well in advance of her age-mates, and by his
description she was someone of uncommon genius and strength of will.
“Will we scare her?” Ezekiel asked.
“We’ll try not to,” Corwin said.
Ezekiel gave him a sour look. “I mean, will
she be afraid of gargoyles?”
“That’s why you’re taking me,” Toby
said as if any idiot should know that.
“But we must be cautious,” Tourmaline said.
“There may be spies --”
“Sure!” Toby cut in. “I didn’t try to call
because I bet they tapped her phone, and they might have guys staking out
the house! But you guys can just
whoosh, swoop on in, and they’ll never know it.”
“He says the house backs onto wilderness,”
Tourmaline continued, quelling Toby’s enthusiasm by bracing her hand on
the top of his head to keep
him from hopping up and down. “We shall approach from that side, but
spread out, lest they are watching.”
They set out, gliding low over the city called
Bellingham. Even so late at night, its streets were a sparkling map of
lights. It was not the unearthly
radiance of Avalon, but it had its own beauty made more potent by the
knowledge that this was something that had been made, invented,
brought into
being by hard work and ingenuity instead of a matter of magic.
With Cassius bearing Toby in his arms (and
having to caution the boy severely to stifle his delighted whoops), they
soared higher into the hills.
Having been jollied into a better mood by
Corwin, Hippolyta found herself enjoying the trip more than any glide since
her very first unassisted one.
There was something different about the world, something vital and
alive that was unlike Avalon. The unpredictability of the weather -- on
Avalon, it was
clear and temperate, or gentle-warm rain and temperate, the sense of
struggle and competition between all the living things as they fought to
keep their
places, survive, thrive. None of it was made by or controlled by ever-present
magic, and that made it seem more real than anything she’d ever
known
before.
Toby directed them to the house, and Tourmaline
signaled for them to fan out. She and Ezekiel would approach the most openly,
trusting to their
darker hues to blend in with the night, while Corwin and Hippolyta
would rely on the trees for cover. Cassius waved to them and swung around
in
search of a safe spot to leave the boy, near enough to come to their
aid in case of emergency.
Although the hour was late, Hippolyta could
see lights shining in some of the windows as she passed over the house
and looped back to come
in low. The back door of the house flew open.
A woman dashed out and began scrambling over the fence. She was followed
by a pale man, and
after a pause
in which he did something that Hippolyta could not clearly discern,
the pursuit was on.
She spied a likely-looking tree with a stout,
perpendicular limb, automatically unslinging her bow from her back and
reaching for an arrow. The
moment her talons touched down, the woman turned a corner and started
toward the street. Tourmaline, coming from the side direction, swooped
less
than three feet above her. The terror-stricken woman never even glanced
up.
The man moved with astonishing speed. He leapt
the fence as if there had been springs in his heels, looming over the woman.
He voiced an eerie,
hungry keen. The woman changed her course with alacrity and plunged
into the woods, passing the tree in which Hippolyta perched. It was Michelle
Jessec, beyond a doubt.
Tourmaline landed between the man and the
fleeing woman, caping her wings with an arrogant flourish and raising one
hand imperiously. “Halt,
human!”
He did, standing stock-still, a white wraith
in a patch of deep shadow that concealed his face. He hissed like a serpent.
And then he lunged.
Hippolyta nocked, drew, and fired in a seamless
ballet --
Missed!
The man tackled Tourmaline, taking and ignoring
a stone-cracking punch and a vicious claw-swipe. He bore her to the earth
and they rolled down
a short slope, during which the light fell on his face and revealed
it clearly.
His rings of teeth bent outward in a needle-sharp
pucker, and battened onto Tourmaline’s bare shoulder. The muscles of his
cheeks and jaw
flexed once, hard, slicing away a perfectly circular scoop of
a wound.
Tourmaline’s shriek could have shattered the
moon. She pistoned her feet up, flipping the man over her head. He crashed
jarringly, a landing
that should have driven the wind from him if nothing else, but bounced
back up.
He grimaced, made a noise that sounded like,
“Blyucch!” and spat the mouthful he’d taken back at Tourmaline. The effective
scissoring edges
of his teeth had rendered the flesh to a wad of mincemeat in that single
bite.
Hippolyta stared helplessly as her rookery
sister scrabbled backward on her haunches, dragging herself with one arm
because the other trailed
limp and bloodsoaked. The man closed in, a hateful gleam in his one
ruby eye. He bent over, perhaps meaning to sample another section and see
if it was any more palatable than the shoulder.
Ezekiel dropped from the sky and swung his
ironwood staff with all his might and momentum. It met the man’s back with
a harsh crack like the
sound of a snapped broomstick. The man pitched flat, legs jittering
as if they could not quite obey his commands. He pushed himself up on his
arms,
snarling, and Ezekiel recoiled as he got his first clear look.
Trembling, Hippolyta loosed another arrow.
It sank fletching-deep in the ground, scant
inches from Tourmaline’s thigh.
“Kill him!” Tourmaline screamed.
Ezekiel jumped as if he’d been jabbed with
a pin. The man snapped at his knee, grazing the skin, and then the ironwood
staff smashed down again.
And again.
And kept smashing down until long after
the man had ceased moving. Ezekiel’s mouth was set in a horrifiedly determined
line as he beat the body
into a crumpled mass.
“Enough!” Cassius cried, coming out of nowhere
to pull Ezekiel away. “He’s dead! Enough!”
For a moment, none of them spoke. Then, slowly,
so very slowly, Tourmaline’s gaze moved from the arrow beside her leg up
to meet Hippolyta’s
eyes.
“You missed. Twice!”
“Sister, you’re bleeding!” Cassius knelt beside
her and groaned in appalled horror at the sight of the wound. He applied
pressure to it, and it took
his entire palm to span the circular gouge.
“I --” was all Hippolyta could say, and her
voice shook so that the single syllable was broken into four.
“What happened?” Tourmaline demanded.
“He wasn’t ten paces from you!”
“I was afraid of hurting him,” she heard herself
say in a weak whisper.
“What would you expect to do with an arrow?”
Ezekiel barked. “Tickle him?”
“Leave her be,” Cassius said. “She’s still
not over killing her first human, how could you expect her to kill
another?”
“That wasn’t human,” stated Tourmaline flatly.
Cassius glanced in puzzlement at the body.
“Yes, he is.”
Hippolyta swayed on the branch, steadied herself
by holding onto the trunk. Because Cassius was right. Despite the terrific
battering delivered by
Ezekiel, the man’s face was decidedly, though misshapenly, human. His
skin was a pinkish color, he had two staring blue eyes instead of a single
red
one, and his mouth was no longer a rounded maw of teeth. Only the blood
running from his lips and chin -- Tourmaline’s blood -- proved he’d done
the biting.
Tourmaline faltered. “That’s impossible! I
saw him!”
“So did I!” Ezekiel said, gaping.
“We’ll unravel this later,” Cassius declared.
“Sister, your arm.”
“I’m fi --” Tourmaline began, but then they
all saw the pain hit her. Her emerald skin faded to a wan olive green,
and her eyelids drooped to half-
mast.
Cassius hastily stripped, using loincloth
and belt to fashion a makeshift bandage and tourniquet. He and Ezekiel
picked her up, bearing her lightly
between them in a litter made from their linked arms.
“Where’s Corwin?” Cassius wondered.
“Here,” Corwin replied, emerging from the
trees. He was carrying an unconscious woman, Michelle Jessec, and walking
a trifle unsteadily as if
he was hurt. He stopped as he got a look at the carnage. “What the
... what happened?”
“Hippolyta failed me,” Tourmaline said, and
fainted.
A short thunderstruck silence later, Corwin
looked up at Hippolyta. “I’m sure she didn’t mean --”
“Yes, she did,” Ezekiel said, throwing her
a glare. “If I hadn’t been in time, we’d be mourning our leader now! We
still may, if we can’t stop
that bleeding!”
“Stop it!” Cassius commanded. “We haven’t
time for this now! Back to the ship, before more humans come! Corwin, you
have the woman,
good, she’s the one we came for. Forget the dead man. And hurry, I
left Toby on a roof down the street.”
He started off, with Tourmaline in his arms
and Ezekiel following. Corwin lingered.
“Sister?” he asked softly.
Hippolyta seized her quivering lip between
her teeth. “I’m well, brother.”
“Pain makes us say things that --”
“Please don’t, Corwin. I know what she said
and what she meant, and she’s right. I failed her. Twice. I missed. Twice.
When have I ever missed
before? Not since mastering the bow. I hesitated, and look what came
of it.”
“You can’t be blamed.”
“No? I’m sure Tourmaline will find a way.
She’ll never forgive me, but that’s well enough, for how could I forgive
myself anyhow?”
“Come down. Come back to the ship. We’ll sort
this out.”
She nodded, hopping down from her branch and
retrieving her arrows. The first one was wedged in a tree. The second snapped
as she tried to
work it out of the earth, so she left half of it buried.
Even Toby sensed that chatter now was not
a good way to brighten their spirits, and they returned to the Mists’
Passage in silence.
**
“Am I under a curse or something?” cried
Winston Churchill Brock IV, who had been trying unsuccessfully since the
age of eleven to get people
to call him ‘Spider.’
He liked the name because it implied a certain amount
of deadliness, something that people were afraid of. It also implied that
he was at the center
of a large web, which suited both his computer skills and his position
as unit director of his division.
However, he’d learned the hard way that nicknames
were given, not chosen. His refusals to answer to Winston, Win,
or even Church had led
one of the upper-echelon agents to tag him with Winchell, like the
donut people, and the fucking name had stuck.
He flung himself into his chair, rocking it
back against the wall and digging his hands into his hair. “You know
Diamond will be here by the end
of the week wanting a progress report! I told her four days ago that
everything was fine, and now it’s all shot to shit!”
“It’s not that bad,” Op. 19 ventured. “We’ve
got roadblocks all around Bellingham. He’ll walk right into one of them
and --”
“What I want to know is how he got out in
the first place.” Brock slammed his chair legs to the floor, leaning forward
in a rapid movement that
would make the operative think that he was about to come across the
polished granite surface and throttle him. “The Tank is supposed to be
secure!”
“As far as we can tell, it is.” Op. 19, a
slim man with medium brown hair and spare, carefully edited features, hoisted
a shoulder in half a shrug.
“There weren’t any physical breaches.”
“So someone had to let him out.”
“The guards all deny it.”
“Of course they do, because they all know
when I find out who it was, I’ll eat his ass for dinner! I want lie detector
tests on each of them.”
“We’ll have to fly a polygraph in from --”
“Then do it! I want to know who let Smythe
out and when, and if I’m in a particularly friendly mood, I’ll even listen
to why. Who knows, maybe
there was a good reason. He was only under strictest quarantine for
exposure to unknown biohazard agents, and --”
The muted tone of an alarm shut Brock up mid-sentence.
He slapped a button on his desk and a print of orcas swimming through the
cracked shell
of a flooded-out post-holocaust Kingdome (something that would never
be seen, as they’d imploded the ugly concrete orange-juicer three years
ago)
slid aside to reveal the flat screen of a monitor.
Op. 11’s face filled it. “There’s a problem
downstairs, sir,” she reported.
“In the labs?”
“No, sir ... in the Tank.”
“What’s the problem?”
“The detainees, one of the medical team, and
one of the guards are dead.”
“What?” Brock popped to his feet. “Dead?
What happened?”
“Still trying to determine, sir. Situation’s
been contained, but the surviving guard is in bad shape and incoherent.”
“On our way.” He cut off the connection and
raised a scornful eyebrow at Op. 19. “Not that bad, you said ...”
Op. 19 didn’t bother responding, and fell
in behind Brock as he headed for the elevator that would take him from
the top floor of C.T.I. to the
Tunnel.
The Tunnel was a half-mile passageway connecting
the main building with the outlying labs. It was an impersonal arched stretch,
tiled in a muted
blue-grey that was a hair away from the right shade to be cool and
soothing; instead, it looked bland and oppressive. Banks of fluorescent
lighting
shed a humming, chilly glow on the chrome handrails that lined the
moving walkway.
The walkway went much faster than the ones
commonly found at airports. Brock and Op. 19 carefully stepped onto the
ribbed black rubber and
held on as the breeze of their motion whipped through their hair.
A hundred yards ahead, a white-coated team
of mop-up Ops. were adding to their velocity by hurrying along the walkway.
Brock decided to
pick up his own feet and see what had hit the fan this time.
“I must be under a curse,” he grumbled. “First
the botch of the Jessec business, and now this.”
Op. 19 stiffened. “We lost two of our best
men. That’s a little worse than a botch.”
Brock eyed him icily. “The fuck-up of the
Jessec business, then. How’s that? And if you were so concerned about their
lives, why didn’t you go
in and do something?”
“If I’d deviated from procedure --”
“Sure, you’d have been disciplined ... but
Shaw might still be alive. And he was worth six of you.”
“How were we supposed to know there were gargoyles
around? There’ve never been any sightings in this area.”
“They’re everywhere these days. Like
rats. You’d just better hope that Shaw didn’t tell them anything. The last
thing we need is a pack of
gargoyles on our backs.”
“If Shaw wouldn’t talk under the influence
of Illuminati hypno-drugs, he wouldn’t cave in on account of a gargoyle.”
“Hunh,” Brock said, knowing Op. 19 was probably
right but not wanting to admit it.
They reached the end of the walkway and disembarked,
and as always the sensation was disconcerting. Brock’s feet stuttered but
this time he
didn’t fall, and took a small measure of pride in that fact. It dimmed
almost at once, because of course Op. 19’s pace didn’t falter at all.
The Tunnel ended at a thick, clear wall with
retina scanners and a voice-recognition lock. The door opened onto a large
round room, which
doubled as a guard station. Although they had been visible for several
minutes, easily identifiable thanks to a series of cameras hidden in the
walls
and ceiling of the Tunnel, the guard was wearing his gas mask and had
his hand on the trigger that would flood the chamber if one of them tried
something tricky. In his other hand, he had a nine-millimeter automatic.
Standard procedure.
But seeing it only deepened the mystery in
Brock’s mind of how Gerald Smythe had managed to escape the Tank. Not only
was the Tank itself
supposed to be utterly secure and so well-sealed that not even a microbe
could get out, he would have had to have come this way because there
weren’t any other exits from the underground levels.
Which meant, Brock realized, that at least
two guards had to have been in on it. And that didn’t make any sense. In
general, the security personnel
and the scientists cordially despised each other. It was possible,
though remote, that Smythe could have cultivated a friendship with one
guard. But two?
Two guards ... and someone in the video
monitoring unit, because none of the tapes showed anything out of the ordinary.
A shop-wide conspiracy? All to whisk a snotty
physicist out of the Tank? Brock could, by stretching his imagination,
see someone letting Smythe
out of the brig, maybe, if that someone felt he’d been unjustly imprisoned.
The Tank was another matter entirely.
Op. 11, a tall thirtyish blonde with eyes
like the fjords, met them at the door. While the desk-guard was visibly
tense and troubled, she was
composed as always.
As always, Brock was helpless not to let his
gaze meander over how well her steel-grey jumpsuit fit. What the hell,
who was going to blame him;
despite his lofty position here, he was still a normal nineteen-year-old
with all the attendant healthy urges.
And as always, she showed no reaction whatsoever.
“This way.” She led them to the viewing room, which let them look down
into the rooms
below through triply-reinforced mirrored glass.
They were looking at the Tank, which despite
its name was six separate isolation enclosures opening off of a central
control room. Airlock doors
led into each, and also into a fully-equipped operating theater and
medical lab.
It was a disaster area. Two of the enclosures
had their front walls broken outward, and chunks of the six-inch-thick
glass lay everywhere like
diamonds of impossible size. Several of the machines in the control
room were smashed. And there were bodies. Three of them. Two were in civilian
clothes, one was in the charcoal-grey uniform of a guard.
The first two were the detainees: a fat asthmatic
doctor named Sondra Neddleman, and a smartass young intern whose name Brock
couldn’t
recall but had never liked. Didn’t matter now; they’d both been shot
multiple times. Blood was sprayed around the room like abstract art, seemingly
gallons of it.
Not all of the blood had come from the detainees,
though. The guard and the on-duty doctor were the source of a good deal
of it.
“Yuck,” Brock opined. “What did that
to them?”
“Apparently, the detainees,” Op. 11 replied.
“They look chewed!”
“Details,” Op. 19 said.
Op. 11 stood at attention with her hands clasped
behind her back, a pose that would normally make Brock ogle like the horny
post-adolescent
he was. But he found the gruesome spectacle of the mauled guard impossible
to look away from, no matter how enticing the alternatives.
“Fourteen minutes ago, the third-shift guards
arrived to relieve the second-shift. They found the scene before us, with
one exception. One of the
second-shift guards, Harstein, was alive and trying unsuccessfully
to reach the intercom to signal for help.”
Below, a door opened and the white-coated
people who had been ahead of Brock on the walkway came in. They were covered
head to foot in
germ-suits, moving a bit slowly and awkwardly due to the bulk.
“The third-shift guards raised the alarm but
lacked the sense to wait outside,” Op. 11 continued. “They rushed in, moved
Harstein to Medical, and
have since been confined to the surgical ward in lieu of proper quarantine.
As the facilities are currently unfit, as you can see.”
“Will the guard survive?” Op. 19 asked.
“Unknown. He’s suffered significant blood
loss and tissue trauma.”
“From the detainees,” Brock said. “You’re
sure? Those two? What do the surveillance tapes show?”
Op. 11 strode wordlessly to a monitor. Brock
and Op. 19 watched in growing incredulity as the action unfolded.
It began with a standard scene for the lateness
of the hour. The lights were dimmed to simulate night, the detainees slept.
One of the guards was
playing a computer game while the other perused a magazine, and the
on-duty physician napped on a cot in the corner.
Then, at what seemed to be the exact same
moment, both detainees experienced some sort of seizure. They fell from
their bunks to the floor. The
guards, alerted by the noise, raised the lights.
The tape didn’t capture the transformation
well, but it did show very clearly how the suddenly inhumanly strong pair
smashed through the supposedly
unbreakable walls of their isolation cells. Dr. Neddleman was shot
in the gut, but her ample layers prevented a fatal wound long enough for
her to
overpower the guard and --
“She’s trying to eat him?” Brock said,
feeling ill.
The intern went after the doctor, but the
second guard -- Harstein -- intervened. In the course of their struggles,
he was bitten several times and
then flung bodily across the room. The doctor had been too rooted in
place by panic to do anything, and only found his wits and tried to run
as the
intern closed in.
While the ghastly feast was commencing, Harstein
pulled himself upright. Though bleeding, though in obvious agony, he drew
his gun and kept
firing until both of the hideously altered detainees went down. He
then attempted to totter toward the intercom, but didn’t quite make it.
“Christ,” Op. 19 murmured as Op. 11 fast-forwarded
the tape. “They changed. They were exposed to something,
but it must have taken a
few days to incubate. Thank God they were quaran --” He forgot how
to finish the word and stood there with his mouth ajar.
“Smythe!” Brock said. “I want him found and
I want him found now!”
“Scheisse!” Op. 11 spat, staring through
the window into the control room.
Brock hastened to look, wondering what could
make her lose her cool enough to swear. He saw it at once, and echoed the
sentiment. “Shit!”
The germ-suited team had turned over the body
of Dr. Neddleman to examine it.
“She’s back to normal!” Op. 19 said. “But
...”
“They revert when they die!” Brock had seen
his share of scary movies as a kid, and his kidhood wasn’t as far behind
him as it was for most
of these people. “Like werewolves! And they bite people, like vampires
or zombies. Okay, first order of business --”
“Full autopsy,” Op. 11 said.
“No, first order of business is to trank Harstein
and anyone who’s had contact with him. Trank ‘em to the gills and strap
them down but good.”
Op. 19 was pale. “Contagion ...”
“You saw what those things did to the wall,
so normal restraints aren’t going to be enough. Then autopsies. But our
real concern has to be getting
ahold of Smythe. If he’s got this too ...” Brock trailed off, envisioning
a spree of attacks leading to exponential increases ... shit! Diamond was
going
to have his ass for breakfast! He had to be under a curse.
“And get me Mirano. Stat. I want Dr. Jessec on site and going over the
entire project
specs by noon.”
Op. 19 was too well-trained to look askance,
but he managed to convey it without altering his expression. “Will we be
shutting it down?”
“And blow millions of dollars as well as putting
all our nuts in the grinder?” He coughed a little as he glanced at Op.
11, almost apologetically. “I’m
not doing that without a really good explanation, and with Smythe
compromised, Jessec’s the only one who can do it.”
**
Icarus asked what had happened, but Hippolyta
couldn’t answer. Instead, she simply finished helping him cast off, and
then left him steering the
Mists’ Passage out to sea. She returned to the mid-deck, where
Corwin had finished making the unconscious Michelle Jessec comfortable.
Toby brought a blanket from below, and tucked
it around his aunt. “Is she going to be all right?”
“I’m sure of it,” Corwin said with warm confidence.
“But why won’t she wake up?”
“Well, she had a bit of a bump.”
“She fell?” Hippolyta asked.
“Nearly ... I was gliding along the gully
and had just turned toward the house, hearing the ruckus. She must have
been running downhill and tripped,
for she came flying out from the trees as if she thought she had wings
of her own. If I’d not been there, it would have been a long fall and a
hard landing.”
“Good catch.”
He shook his head and laughed disarmingly,
running his talons through his hair. “Not even that! She collided with
me and all I had to do was bring
up my arms. And let me tell you, sister ... these humans may look soft,
especially ones so small and well-curved as this one, but try having one
catapulted into you at very close range! Took the wind from me, almost
sprung my shoulder from its joint. She’ll ache when she wakes, and I’ll
be
surprised if none of her ribs are broken.”
From below came a screech so shrill it made
bones vibrate.
“Ah, Tourmaline’s come ‘round,” Corwin noted.
Hippolyta cringed guiltily.
The noise roused Michelle Jessec, who erupted
out of her insensibility with a convulsive gasp that turned instantly to
a moan. She crumpled to the
bed of straw Corwin had made, breathing in hitches and little mewled
cries.
“Aunt Shelley!” Toby started to fling himself
at her, but Corwin caught him.
“Steady, lad ... she’s hurt.”
The woman’s eyes, round as saucers, drank
in the sight of the boy. “T-Toby?”
“You’re safe now,” Hippolyta said.
“Dreaming,” Michelle Jessec stated with a
comprehensive sadness. “This is a dream.”
“No, Aunt Shelley, it’s real, I swear. Look,
gargoyles!” Toby pointed with great excitement at Corwin. “This is Corwin,
he saved your life! And
they saved me, and Dad too!”
“But they told me ... Mirano said ...” She
fumbled for words, doubtful, unwilling to hope, unwilling to take false
solace even in a dream. Then her
gaze shifted to Corwin, and she added, “But I remember ... falling
... hitting something ... seeing ... wings?”
Toby verbally fell all over himself relating
the events of the past few nights -- the explosion on board the Jessica,
the intervention of the gargoyles,
being questioned by the FBI, he and his father making a sudden exodus
from their home. “And we had to come here, Aunt Shelly, ‘cause, see, they
were worried that the real reason someone was trying to bump me and
Dad was because of you! Isn’t that wacky? Like you were a spy or
a double
agent or something!”
Michelle burst into tears, great wracking
sobs that shook her slight body and had to cause fierce spasms of pain.
The sounds of misery pierced
Hippolyta’s soul, bearing as they did a terrible weight of guilt and
self-loathing.
Hippolyta and Corwin exchanged a nonplussed
glance, and then Corwin gingerly gathered Michelle into his arms. He rocked
slowly, the way
Princess Katherine had used to soothe them as hatchlings, and soon
she had subsided into watery hiccups.
“They wanted me to work for them,” she said,
speaking so low they could hardly hear her. “They wouldn’t tell me on what,
and I was happy
at Everstar so the salary alone wasn’t incentive. If they’d told
me ... I would have been tempted! Who wouldn’t be? That kind of breakthrough
...
years ahead of what I was working on! But they decided they
had to convince me like this ...”
Toby was crying too. “It’s okay, Aunt Shelley,
we’re okay.”
“You need fear them no more,” Hippolyta said.
For the first time, it truly seemed to sink
into her awareness that they were gargoyles. And more, that one
of them was touching her, nearly
holding her on his lap. She tensed and looked up at Corwin in startled
apprehension.
Had she not been so distraught herself, Hippolyta
might have been amused by what happened next. That look of startled apprehension
melted
like frost, and slow wonder suffused Michelle Jessec’s wide eyes.
“Gargoyles ...” she breathed. “Somehow I always
thought you’d be ... that you wouldn’t be ... you’re beautiful!”
She even raised a tentative
hand, but caught herself before she could touch his face.
Corwin grinned his abashed grin. “I’m fortunate,
lady, that’s all, to have features held handsome by members of all three
races.”
Most incredibly, somehow he managed to say
it without sounding vain at all. He let go of her, and she was blushing,
trying to collect herself.
Hippolyta had to smile.
Although her ribs did hurt, Michelle hugged
Toby as if she’d thought she’d never see him again -- which, in fact, must
have been just what she’d
thought. “Your dad’s really all right?”
“Well,” Toby hesitated. “Something bad happened,
he won’t tell me what, but he’s been sleeping all the time and the rest
of the time he just sits
around staring.”
“He crossed a line,” Hippolyta said softly,
fixing Michelle’s attention with her eyes to assure the woman knew what
she meant. “He acted as a
warrior, as a soldier.”
“Ron?” she whispered, dumbfounded.
“Huh? What?” Toby put on the grim pout all
children seemed to wear when they sensed the adults were speaking in circles
around them.
Cassius emerged from below decks, and as he
appeared and moved into the circle of flamelight from the magical torch
affixed to the mast, Michelle’s
mouth fell open.
Hippolyta rose, braced as if for a blow. “How
is she?”
“Cross as a scalded cat, as Guardian Tom would
say,” Cassius said merrily, and Hippolyta felt a bit of her tension ease.
Not even Cassius would
joke if the news were all bad. “But there was a sticky froth in that
bite wound, like what we’ve heard of in rabid beasts. So I doused it with
an entire
bottle of what Ron called perrosside. That’s what made her howl.
I’ve never seen such bubbling and foaming.”
“Oh, my ...” Michelle said. Then, hastily,
she shook her head in short sharp arcs and averted her gaze, her blush
returning in a bright tide.
“Don’t worry, Aunt Shelly! Cassius looks scary,
but he’s really nice,” Toby assured her.
“He’s ...” She stole another peek as if to
be sure of what she was seeing, and shook her head some more. “He’s ...
um ... undressed.”
Hippolyta wrinkled her brow ridge in puzzlement
at Corwin, and he did the same. But then his expression cleared and he
chuckled.
“Cassius,” he called. “Cover thy glory, brother!”
“Cover my what? Oh! The human nudity taboo!”
Cassius folded a wing to conceal himself. “Forgive me, madam ... we gargoyles
aren’t ashamed
of our bodies as you humans are. I used my loincloth to bind my sister’s
wound. I’ll go don another, but then if you could, I’d like to hear more
of this
creature that attacked them.”
“Aye, as would we all,” Hippolyta said. “Was
it a man or wasn’t it? And if not, what was it?”
“Don’t begin without me!” Cassius said as
he retreated.
“We’re not ashamed of our bodies,”
Michelle finally said.
“But isn’t that why you wear clothes?” Corwin
asked.
“Well ... partly ... don’t you people get
cold?”
“We have greater resistance to temperatures
than your kind,” Hippolyta said.
“On Avalon,” Corwin added, “from whence we
come, the weather was always mild. There was no need for protective garments.”
“You mean you always went naked?” Toby goggled
at Hippolyta’s halter and the cleavage it revealed.
Corwin laughed. “Alas, no ... our human foster-parents
bade us dress, for although we were not troubled by our nakedness,
they were.”
Cassius returned, a spare loincloth of creamy
white contrasting nicely with his ebony-black skin. Icarus, now that the
craft was well out to sea and
in no danger of running aground, joined them.
“Ezekiel?” Corwin asked.
“I left him to stay with Tourmaline. He’s
a bit unsettled. Says he bludgeoned a monster and then it turned into a
human. And you know ‘Zeke. He’s
steadfast, not prone to flights of fancy. It cannot have been his imagination.
So what happened out there?”
“It was a human,” Michelle said. She
told them about Gerald Smythe, and the horrendous transformation he’d undergone.
As she spoke, she
seemed to be watching them all for signs of disbelief, but found none.
“He said something about ‘contagion,’ though ... if he had some sort of
disease,
your sister might have been infected.”
“None of us have ever been ill,” Icarus said
slowly.
“There was no sickness on Avalon,” Corwin
said. “We never thought of what we might be susceptible to in the outer
world.”
“The Magus said that our ancestors were remarkably
hardy,” Cassius said. “Even when plagues swept the castle. We may be immune,
or at least
resistant, to most illnesses.”
“This is no normal illness,” Michelle said.
“If I’m right in my thinking, it’s not even native to this world.”
“Tourmaline is breeding,” Hippolyta said,
discovering a fresh new layer of dread just when she thought she’d exhausted
them all. “Could this harm
her egg?”
“You lay eggs? Cool!” Toby cried.
“We don’t even know what we’re dealing with,”
Michelle said. “Gerald broke a high-level quarantine to get out and warn
me. He knew better than
that! The only reason he would have done it was if he really believed
that the danger was greater if the secret was kept.”
“What secret?” Icarus asked. His scowl was
fearsome enough to make the woman quail. “What have you unleashed?”
Toby had been trying doggedly to follow the
conversation, and his face suddenly lit up. “Aunt Shelley! You mean these
guys really were government
agents trying to get to you, like on the X-Files or something? Because
they wanted you to come work for them on some top-secret project, maybe
a
weapon?”
“I don’t know if it started out that way,”
Michelle said heavily. “But that’s what it always turns into. The quest
for power is just a quest for the next super-weapon.”
**
“The plot thickens,” Royce Mirano said, his
voice muffled and made tinny by the filtration mask.
Op. 34 squatted beside the corpse. “I’ve seen
a lot of dead men in my time,” he said, “but this is the first time I’ve
seen one that was literally
beaten to a pulp.”
“Can you confirm it’s Smythe?”
“It’s Smythe, all right. Though whether the
undertaker will be able to put him back together enough for his family
to recognize him, that’s up in the
air.”
“Won’t matter. As I understand it, he’s got
a date with the coroner and then the crematorium. I hate shit like this.”
After hearing about the massacre in the Tank,
Mirano wouldn’t have chosen to approach one of the suspected infectees
in anything less than full
biohazard gear. But, dammit, they hadn’t been expecting to stumble
across Smythe’s body. And that was exactly what had happened; Op. 16,
scouting the area, had literally tripped over it.
Now Op. 16 was confined in one of the inflatable,
pressurized, and germ-proof devices the operatives called the Beach Ball
or the Hamster
Ball, in the rear of the van. Mirano and Op. 34, lacking biosuits,
had been forced to depend on the masks alone.
That didn’t make Mirano terribly happy. He’d
worked for a chemical and biological warfare development company in New
Jersey long enough
to whip up a nice tight phobia about stuff like this. Which was why
he’d jumped ship for the Coalition in the first place. They weren’t into
that sort
of tinkering. Nice clean sciences like physics and computers, not messy
ones that screwed with viruses or bacteria or people’s DNA.
“So what’s he doing here?” Op. 34 asked.
“That’s easier to answer than how’d he get
out in the first place, but that’s Op. 19’s baby. Poor son of a bitch.
First Smythe escapes on his watch,
then he gets sent along with Shaw. I’m glad all we got assigned was
coaxing the woman.”
“Except she’s gone,” Op. 34 pointed out.
“Yeah. Okay, try this on ... Smythe escapes
from the Tank, never mind how. He knows we’re trying to bring Jessec on
board with the project, so
he hies his butt all the way out here to talk to her. Maybe wanting
her to help him go public and blow the whistle on it, maybe to warn her
and get her
to sabotage, who knows. Anyway, while he’s here, he gets hit with the
same freakshow that went on back at H.Q. Goes after Jessec. Tears the door
off, chases her around the house, but she gets away.”
“How do we know she gets away?”
“Because she’s not scattered all over the
goddam landscape, chewed into mulch like the poor slobs in the Tank.”
“Fair enough,” allowed Op. 34. “But then who
does this to Smythe? Even if Jessec’s a karate master, which we know she
isn’t, there’s no way
she could inflict this kind of damage.”
“Which means someone else entered the picture.”
Mirano started to bend over, but that would have brought his head closer
to the corpse than
he’d have cared for, and kicked at something on the ground.
Op. 34 turned his flashlight on it. “A broken
arrow.”
“Op. 19 claims he saw Op. 10 bowshot twice.”
“Gargoyles.”
“Give the man a cigar.”
“So they mess up Shaw’s mission out in the
San Juans, figure out that it wasn’t Ron Jessec but his sister that we’re
interested in --”
“Op. 19 also claims Shaw wouldn’t blab, but
none of us ever know until the time comes. Assume he blabs.”
“Then these gargoyles, interfering do-gooders
by nature, come here.”
Mirano nodded. “Which means they’ve taken
her with them. But they’ll be back.”
“Why?”
“Because the macrosphere drive is still in
her living room. By the looks of it, she’d had time to go over the files,
and she knows what we’re doing.
She’s seen what it did to Smythe. And the one big problem we had recruiting
Michelle Jessec in the first place was because she was so annoyingly
ethical. Even if she was intrigued by the project, by now you
can bet she’s decided we have to be stopped.”
**
“They have to be stopped,” Michelle concluded.
Hippolyta carefully masked her expression
and looked around at her rookery siblings. Four of them wore identical
careful masks, while Ezekiel
was openly baffled.
“I think you lost ‘em,” Ron Jessec said.
Since rousing from another of his deep slumbers
to find his little sister at his side, his condition had markedly improved.
He was still appalled at
the memory of what he’d done, the bloodthirsty way in which he’d acted,
but was taking the first uncertain steps toward acceptance. The news that
the people they were facing were apparently pure evil was something
of a consolation, to him as well as to Hippolyta.
“I know it’s a lot to take in ...” Michelle
began.
Corwin gave her his most dazzling smile, the
one that had once made even the virginal Artemis sigh wistfully. “Not at
all! We understand. You’re
talking about a magic doorway.”
Michelle stared at him. “A what?”
“A magical doorway to another world. These
... ‘quantum particle chains connecting all points in the universe’ ...
these ‘frequencies’ that can travel
between them ... it sounds like magic to mine ears.”
“So it does,” Tourmaline agreed. She was swathed
in bandages from neck to elbow, but had refused all offers of medicine
to help with the pain,
and leaned against Ezekiel rather than be flat on her back like an
invalid. “And these wizards carelessly opened one to a place they knew
nothing about.”
“Loosing evil sorceries that turned them into
monsters,” Ezekiel said.
“No ... it must have been some sort of bacterial
... well, I guess that works well enough,” Michelle admitted.
“And you have in your house one of their Grimorums,”
Cassius said. “With it, you might be able to undo their spells.”
“I’d at least have proof of what they were
doing.”
“But Shelley!” Ron said. “We all know what
these people are willing to do just to get you on their team! What do you
think they’ll do if you
double-cross them? Think about Mom and Dad!”
“I have been, but I also have to think about
everyone. About the whole world. And what Mom and Dad would want
me to do, no matter the
risks. I know the mindset that groups like the Coalition have. Because
something’s been proven dangerous does not mean they’ll burn it down, lock
the door behind them, and never look back. On the contrary! They’ll
keep poking at it, trying to figure out ways to turn that danger to their
advantage.”
“But something like this can be to no one’s
advantage,” Corwin said. “Do they not see that?”
“No, they don’t. It’s that mentality that
brought us man-made Ebola and the nuclear bomb. Viruses and radiation don’t
care, and can’t be
contained or controlled. Whatever Smythe’s team found on the other
side of that ... magic doorway ... is exactly the same.”
“Then we stop them,” Ezekiel said. “We storm
their fortress and destroy the doorway forever.”
“You can’t do it that way,” piped up Toby,
seeming quite pleased with himself to have something to contribute to the
discussion. “It’s not like
they’re in a castle with just walls, big crossbows, and boiling oil.”
“Toby’s right,” Michelle said. “I’m sure the
Coalition labs are well-hidden, probably underground, with electronic security
and armed guards.
It’s probably a large complex. We wouldn’t even be sure what we were
looking for, let alone how to find it.”
“There must be something we can do,” said
Tourmaline. “This Coalition has done harm to me and my clan --” she spared
Hippolyta a brief but
smoking look, “-- and while there is little point in revenge, there
is every point in prevention. If I hear you rightly, more of these
shapechanged
humans might arise, and they pose a threat to all of us, human and
gargoyle alike.”
“I need the information on that macrosphere,”
Michelle said. “I don’t know what I’d do with it ... the only thing
I can think of is to pretend I
know nothing, go along with their plans, and try to find some way of
ruining them from within.”
“Shelley, you can’t!” Ron protested.
“I probably can’t,” she agreed. “You know
me, Ron, I’ve never been a good liar. They’d have too many reasons to be
suspicious already
anyway.”
“Are there no constables?” Cassius asked.
“The Coalition is more than a technology company,”
Michelle said. “They have ties to the government, I’m sure of it. I wouldn’t
know whom
I could trust, and not have word of it get back to them.”
“But they can’t work this magic without you,
isn’t that so?” asked Ezekiel. “Thus, you refuse.”
“And they slaughter her family,” Hippolyta
said. “True, we have brought Ron and Toby to safety, but there are others
she cares for that could
be used against her.
Ron drew in a slow gasp. “I just realized ... we can never go
back. We can never go home, or we’ll be making targets of ourselves. We’ll
have
to disappear, sever all contacts, build whole new lives and identities
...”
“Think not on that now,” Corwin said. “You
are safe, and you are together. That is what matters.”
“I can’t let them hurt Mom and Dad,” Michelle
said, “but I can’t continue Smythe’s work. I can’t help them. I don’t know
what to do.”
“I still say we storm the place --”
“Ezekiel,” Tourmaline said warningly, and
he lapsed into silence. “Woman, if they cannot find you, they will have
no reason to hold your family
as bait. So you, like your brother, must vanish and make a new life.”
“Run away, you mean.”
“It seems as if you have no other choice.”
“They’ll find someone else to pick up the
project where Smythe left off. I can’t let that happen. I have to try to
stop them, somehow. But I can’t
do that without the macrosphere. Whatever else comes next, I need to
go back and get it before they come take it away.”
“We will handle that,” Tourmaline said firmly.
“Tonight, at once. Corwin, Cassius, Ezekiel ...”
Hippolyta sat straighter.
Tourmaline exhaled a soft growl and looked
back to the males. “I do not like sending only the three of you, but it’s
unavoidable as I cannot go
with you. Return to the house and find this device.”
“I will go,” Hippolyta said.
“Be cautious, because they may already know
of us and be expecting us,” Tourmaline said, ignoring her.
Icarus cleared his throat with a noise like
a small landslide. “I can glide, and fight. I need not always be
left behind.”
“Very well,” Tourmaline said. “Four of you
--”
“I will go too!” Hippolyta stood, half-extending
her wings.
“No, sister, you will not.”
“I am fit to fight!”
“Are you?” Tourmaline rose unsteadily, eyes
flashing. “I had hoped to spare you a public dressing-down, Hippolyta,
but as you insist ... I think
you unfit for this task! You froze, you faltered. I will not
put our brothers in a position in which they might need to rely upon you.
Until you have
come to terms with this newfound hesitation, I dare not give you such
responsibility!”
There followed one of the least comfortable
moments known to all thinking creatures, in which the rest of the group
looked away in various
directions and tried to make believe they were not listening, embarrassed
on her behalf.
Hippolyta felt a quaver begin in the small of her
back and spread slowly up her spine, and whether it was of shame or fury,
she did not know.
Part of her screamed that she address this insult, another part shouted
in support of Tourmaline’s accusations, and as those two parts warred it
out within her, she was helpless to move.
“Tourmaline ...” Corwin tried.
“Gabriel may have been able to get by with
being a diplomatic and compassionate leader, hearing out and coddling the
wishes of everyone in
the clan,” Tourmaline said coolly. “Peaceful Avalon offers that luxury
among its many others. This is a place of life-or-death risks, and I will
not
let hurt feelings influence my judgement.”
A second, longer span of uncomfortable silence
spun out. Finally, Hippolyta blew out a shaky breath and let her wings
fall around her shoulders
while she dipped her head in contrition and acceptance.
**
The first of the back-up teams, consisting
of a second van packed with fifteen arms-trained operatives, showed up
within ten seconds of their
promised time of arrival.
Mirano dispatched them into the woods in groups
of three, searching for Michelle Jessec or anything that might remain of
her, and to be on the
lookout for gargoyles. Thankfully, while the Coalition had never run
into gargoyles before, they had access to detailed files and a decent idea
of
what to expect.
“If the opportunity presents,” he added, “a
live specimen would be appreciated. Use the gas darts first, stun-bolas
second, guns last.”
Op. 34 disconnected the macrosphere drive
from the laptop and packed all of the equipment away. To make sure that
no copies of the
information were left behind, he also boxed up Dr. Jessec’s personal
computer and every disk he could find.
Mirano was glad that the neighborhood was so scattered
and remote. No neighbors were near enough to remark on the activity at
the duplex.
The helicopter, an unmarked ambulance unit that would be used to transport
Op. 16 and the corpse of Gerald Smythe back to C.T.I, would be
sure to draw some attention even out here in the sticks when it showed
up.
That was unavoidable, and would just have to be
suffered. Smythe and the others had gone days without showing symptoms,
but they couldn’t
take chances. Had to know now what was in him, whether it had
been transferred to Op. 16, and what it might do.
“All finished,” Op. 34 said, clicking shut
the latches. “Unless she’s hidden a disk somewhere.”
“The fire will take care of anything we might
have missed,” Mirano said. He checked his watch. “The arson boys will be
here in half an hour.”
“Good thing it rained recently.”
“Huh?”
Op. 34 grinned wryly. “I was a tree-hugger
in college.”
“You can work with a man every day for twenty
years and still never know all his painful secrets,” Mirano remarked.
“Wasn’t my fault … the girl I was seeing was
into it. Vegan, no leather, free the egg-farm chickens, the whole deal.”
“She must’ve been a piece to get you to go
along with that.”
“Let’s just say it wasn’t just my political
consciousness she raised. But some of the old habits are still lurking
around in me.”
“I’ll ask them to make it a contained, surgical
burn,” Mirano said, smiling.
“Thanks.” He picked up the cases. “Mind getting
that last one? We can get this stuff stowed and have time for a cig before
the chopper boys
get here.”
“Your environmentalist nymphette didn’t break
you of that habit, I see.”
“Hey, she smoked … just wasn’t tobacco
…”
They walked outside, toward their waiting
van. The operative stationed at the door, yet another of the young fresh-faced
kids that Winchell
Brock liked to fill the ranks with and then regretted because he ended
up universally despising them, nodded as they went by.
“All quiet?” Mirano asked.
“Yes, sir. All but one of the teams have reported
back --”
WHOOOSH!
Mirano and Op. 34 both turned to face the
source of the oncoming noise. A solid bar of pain slammed across their
midsections. Their arms
jerked helplessly up, launching their burdens on a skyward trajectory
as they were plowed under.
As he hit the spongy, muddy lawn, Mirano saw
the winged shape bullet by above him, and reconstructed what had happened.
The dark green
gargoyle had been wielding his staff crossways, clotheslining them
in the stomach. And two more gargoyles, following on the heels of the staff-
wielder, snatched the computer cases out of the air neat as could please.
The kid on the front walk – how’d he get so
far away, the chicken? -- was hollering in a panic, trying to untangle
the straps of his dart launcher
from the tubing of his mask. Another operative, a grizzled older tough
who called himself Judge, shouldered him out of the way and took aim.
“Gas darts first, goddammit!” Mirano
would have yelled, if he hadn’t been wheezing and retching and feeling
like his internal organs had been
shoved rudely up into his chest cavity.
Wouldn’t have mattered … Judge opened fire
with a recoilless shotgun that thundered like the very voice of God.
One of the gargoyles pitched sideways, taking
the brunt of the blast. Judge’s thin lips curled in a sneer of satisfaction,
and that was when Mirano
remembered that of all the team, Judge was the only one who had personal
experience with these creatures. The mechanical metal claw that replaced
one of his hands was evidence of a previous encounter.
Something bellowed from on high. Mirano instinctively
tried to roll and bumped into Op. 34, who wasn’t moving. A quick glance
told him why –
the back of his head had impacted explosively with a tree trunk.
His first thought was of life’s little ironies,
and his second was the realization how lucky he was to be alive. They hadn’t
just been knocked down,
they’d been thrown all the way to the edge of the yard. It was
only luck that Mirano had landed on an open patch of ground. A foot in
either direction
and he would have been as dead as Op. 34.
The shot gargoyle, the blackest and most satanic-looking
thing Mirano had ever seen, made a crater in the sidewalk. At the bottom
of the crater,
somewhere beneath that large body, was whatever was left of Dr. Jessec’s
hard drive.
Another one plummeted from above, not so much descending
as just dropping. He was massive and slate-grey, his wings bunched
ugly masses
of tissue, and when he landed, the earth shook. He landed right in
front of Judge, on the foot of the panicked younger operative, and
tore the shotgun
out of Judge’s grasp.
More operatives were converging, and the other two
– the one with the staff and a golden one with the macrosphere case – looped
around and
came back. Mirano groped for his sidearm, spitting out a mouthful of
what he hoped was bile but feared was blood.
Judge and the grey one stared each other down for
a moment, and then both moved at once. Judge went for a dart launcher,
not his own but that
of the screaming kid next to him. The gargoyle brought up the shotgun.
The shotgun discharged and blew Op. 28 into fragments
as its barrel curved in the strength of the gargoyle’s powerful arms. He
bent it around
Judge’s neck, a collar, a choker, a strangling noose of bored steel.
The dart gun went off -- ffftt! – and the
sharp projectile impaled the grey gargoyle just below the collarbone. As
it struck, the chamber on the
end popped open, spraying a cloud of the sedative gas. And of course
the gargoyle, gasping in surprise at the sudden sting of the needle, sucked
the
gas deep into his lungs.
A spotlight in the sky and the chatter of rotors
announced the helicopter, zooming in low over the trees and jigging momentarily
as the pilot took
in the scene below.
Operatives converged on the two that had foolishly
returned to help the others. The green one shook, but with rage instead
of fear, and launched
himself at them whirling his staff like a deadly dervish. Mirano, still
helpless on the ground, could only watch as the end of the staff hit a
man in the side
of the face so hard his jaw dislocated from both hinges and his neck
snapped from the force of his spin.
Another operative whirled and released a set
of stun-bolas, metallic balls on the end of a cable. The bolas whipped
around one of the green
gargoyle’s ankles, failing to entangle him. But when the metal balls
twisted tight and touched each other, electricity jolted through the cable
and felled
him like a clubbed ox.
The grey one reeled back, stepping off of
young Op. 41’s foot – Mirano couldn’t see the appendage from here, but
figured that it was crushed
as surely as it would have been if an eighteen-wheeler had run over
it – and went heavily to one knee.
The golden one was crouched low beside the
black one, wings tucked against his back, the macrosphere case cradled
in the crook of one arm.
But seeing his other companions fall, he sprang up with a fierce, weirdly
noble cry. And something about him, the determined light in his eyes or
the
way the wind chose that moment to throw his white hair dramatically,
gave the operatives pause.
Mirano pulled himself to a sitting position
and gestured to Op. 20 to take over as senior commander, since he couldn’t
do it and the next highest
ranking one of them had a shotgun pretzled around his throat.
Op. 20 stepped forward. “Dart guns ready!”
he barked.
You can take the man out of the firing
squad … Mirano thought.
The ring of operatives, except for Op. 41,
raised their dart guns.
“Aim!” Op. 20 called.
Then he twitched as if stung by a bee, and
stuck out his tongue impossibly far … and then he collapsed.
**
Hippolyta was holding onto the railing of the
Mists’ Passage hard enough to leave marks. Her eyes felt
hot enough to ignite stone, and her teeth
ached from clenching them.
All else on board was peaceful. Ron, Michelle,
and Toby were cloistered below, alternating between relieved joy at their
reunion and discussing
possible courses of action once Michelle had the information on the
macrosphere in her possession again. Tourmaline had finally consented to
take
something for the pain, and relaxed in a near-doze.
That left them with only one of the pain pills,
and Hippolyta was more and more sure that one wouldn’t be enough. That
more would be needed.
Urgently. Tonight.
A spark of moving light caught her eye. A
craft, a flying craft, hugging low to the treetops. It seemed to be headed
in the direction of Michelle’s
house.
She knew who it was, who it had to be. And
there was no question of what to do. She had been ordered in no uncertain
terms by the leader of
her clan to stay put.
So she swan-dove from the prow of the ship,
letting the air catch her just before she would have splashed into the
waves, and glided toward land.
By the time she was close enough to see the
house, she already had bow and arrow in hand, and more arrows held in her
teeth and the small
talons of her wings. She was able to land on the roof with impunity,
for all the attention of the ten or so humans was centered on the tableau
that
had Corwin as its focus.
She saw Cassius struggling to rise, bleeding
from many wounds all down his back. She saw Ezekiel sprawled motionless,
and Icarus on his knees
barely clinging to consciousness. She saw humans everywhere, all of
them dark-clad and carrying weapons that she couldn’t identify but didn’t
need
to. They were weapons, their use was plain, and that was enough.
“Aim!” one of them shouted.
She did, at him. As he drew in a breath for
his next command, she beat him to it and fired.
Her arrow pierced the base of his skull. The tip
popped out of his mouth like a strange tongue.
Before he hit the ground, Hippolyta was firing again.
She did not pause to think, just chose targets and let fly. Without ample
aiming time, she
wasn’t sure of a kill with each shot, but no arrow lodged elsewhere
than in a human torso. Four more of them went down before the remaining
few
scurried for cover.
The flying craft had been about to settle to ground,
but it soared high now and pinned her in a circle of harsh white brilliance.
Its noise hammered
at her, drowned out the yells of the humans and her rookery brothers
as Corwin and Cassius attacked. The roof around her kicked up flecks of
its
substance.
Shooting at her! And her bow would be useless against
such as that!
Hippolyta raced for the edge of the roof, toward
the rear of the house and away from the battle so as to lure the craft
away from her brothers. It
worked too well, for even in the thick trees she could not elude that
blinding beam. It so dazzled her eyes that she glided into a tree, striking
her
forehead a glancing blow and jarring her bow from her grasp. She recovered,
but the bow was nowhere to be seen and a chatter of gunfire shredded
the leaves and branches around her.
She kept going, but unexpectedly came to the gully
that Corwin had mentioned. The land fell away steeply, leaving her without
cover, open and
exposed as the flying craft closed in.
Icarus came from nowhere, his damaged wings stretched
to full extension and a grimace of effortful pain on his face. He collided
with it as if he
meant to batter his way in, and then latched onto the side and began
tearing at the metal shell.
Hippolyta shrieked a savage cheer and flew toward
him. Together, they would breach that hull and deal with the troublesome
foes within!
The craft banked sharply, perhaps trying to throw
Icarus off. The pummeling downdraft of its rotors caught Hippolyta, wrenching
her wings. She
lost control and the punishing wind sent her tumbling like a leaf.
She fell into the gully, unable to right herself,
unable to tell up from down. She dimly heard Icarus roaring, and the groaning
scream of metal giving
way.
The gully was deep … she had time to recover before
–
She hit a rock outcropping, and was engulfed in
a sheeting white flare even brighter than the flying craft’s spotlight.
She couldn’t move, couldn’t
breathe, couldn’t see. A terrible paralysis had locked her in an unbreakable
grip.
Paralysis … stiffness … was this how it ended? Was
this how it felt to die? She’d never imagined that she would still be aware
to feel her limbs
slowly succumbing to the eternal stone sleep …
Over the faint chuckling of water from somewhere
below her, she heard the patter of gravel raining onto the earth and knew
it was coming from
her body, crumbling away.
Sliding … falling …
Hippolyta gave up and let herself sink into the
cold darkness.
**
Neither Michelle nor Ron had the temerity to
suggest that Tourmaline go back below decks and rest.
Since the moment Toby had come bursting in
to announce that he saw a helicopter in the hills above Bellingham, all
of them had been waiting
tensely on deck. When the helicopter had further gone wildly erratic
and then plunged from sight, only to announce its fate seconds later in
a roiling
fireball, the tension had turned to stark horror.
And when Tourmaline had come to the realization
that Hippolyta was nowhere aboard the Mists’ Passage, she had instantly
shaken off the lingering
effects of the painkillers and become purposefully, icily furious.
“There they are!” Toby cried, almost hysterical
in relief.
Four gargoyles descended to the ship, landing
gracelessly and with varying evident degrees of pain. Cassius, whose back
was sodden with his own
blood from shoulderblades to the base of his tail, had been supporting
and supported by Ezekiel, who was unmarked except for scorched loops on
one leg but whose eyes had the shocky stare of an electrocution victim.
Icarus’ movements were sluggish, his expression dead and dispirited.
Of them all, only Corwin seemed unharmed, and he
bowed slightly to Michelle as he presented her with the case containing
the Coalition-designed
laptop and macrosphere drive. But there was a bleakness about him that
robbed his gesture of any meaning or triumph.
“Where is she?” Tourmaline asked with deceptive
calm. “Hiding, I’ll warrant … and with good reason! When I get through
with her --”
Icarus uncurled his fist and spilled gravel onto
the planks. “For all your wrath, you can do no worse than this.”
Tourmaline was riveted, her mouth agape.
“The hurricane of that metal craft slapped her from
the air,” Icarus went on. “She must have landed on an outcrop at the edge
of the gully, for I found
fresh earth and …” He took a breath and released it with a shudder.
“And her shattered stone and gravel below.”
“Oh, that impetuous dolt!” Tourmaline groaned. “I
told her she wasn’t to go! I told her she wasn’t fit! And now what
has she done? Disobeyed me
and gotten herself killed! And look at the rest of you, by the Dragon,
you all could have died because of that --”
“NO!” Corwin’s wings exploded from his back and
his tail whipped the deck with plank-splitting force. “Finish that sentence
and I’ll challenge
leadership from you here and now, Tourmaline! You weren’t there … you
know nothing of what happened!”
“She saved us,” Cassius said. “We were done for,
at gun’s point. All of the wounds you see had been done ‘ere she even arrived,
and when she
did … like an avenging angel …”
“If not for her, we would have been taken captive
or slain,” Corwin went on. “She gave her life in that battle, and I will
hear no ill spoken of her! Not
by you, not by anyone! Now, or ever!”
Icarus nodded. “She did what had to be done, though
it cost her everything. All we’ve left is the memory of her. Don’t you
try to take that from us,
Tourmaline.”
“Leave her alone!” Ezekiel said, coming to Tourmaline’s
side. “What she says is partly true. Hippolyta did disobey! We may
well have --”
“You were unconscious all the while, brother, so
don’t speak of what you can’t recall,” Cassius advised him sternly. “And
if you were about to say
we may well have escaped anyway, then you’re either a liar or a fool.”
“And you, Tourmaline,” Corwin said. “Does it mean
nothing to you that our sister is dead? Our own fair Hippolyta,
fiery and strong, is dead! If
all that means to you is how it reflects on you as leader, if all that
matters to you is your status and that she disobeyed your order, say it
now and let us
part ways. For I cannot follow a leader who cares more for such things
than the lives of her clan.”
“Curse you, Corwin, you know that I loved her!”
Tourmaline said. “She was my sister and my friend!”
“Then show it,” Icarus growled. “Grieve for her,
don’t blame her!”
Tourmaline turned from them, covering her face with
her hands and bringing her wings around herself as a cocoon. Ezekiel gave
his brothers a
reproachful look and put his arms around her, enfolding her in his
wings as well.
No more words were said, and the sun rose over the
Cascades to end that long, tragic night.
**
The End