Darkwalker: A Tale of the Urban Shaman (44 page)

Her path to power was clear of obstruction.

47. WOLF

I was still trying to get my mind in gear and sort out my thoughts and feelings as I stepped out into the corridor, following Gage and Roth. Distantly, I heard Gage clear his throat.

“
Um... sir?” he said.

Roth stopped and turned.

“
If I might have a moment with you and Railwalker Wolf?”

Roth nodded. Gage turned to look back toward me. He looked concerned.

“
Railwalker? Are you okay?”

I took a deep breath, dismissed my confused thoughts. “Yeah,” I said, “I’m fine.”

Gage didn’t look like he believed it, but he gestured at the conference room door. “If you would? For a moment?”

I shook myself, nodded, and the three of us filed into the conference room.

“
Mr. Roth,” Gage asked, “do you trust me?”

Roth looked at him for a long moment before answering. “The trust I had in Chief Adams was built up over the course of thirty years of working together,” he said finally. “I trusted Adams’s judgment, and Adams trusted you, so I was ready to give you the benefit of the doubt. So far you’ve done nothing to make me regret that. That’s the best I can tell you right now. Why? What’s this about?”

“
Sir, I’m going to have to ask you a personal question, and the answer is something I think both the Railwalker and I need to know, if we’re going up against this woman. I’d appreciate it if you’d give us a straight answer.”

Roth sighed, pulled one of the chairs out from the conference table, and sat down. He looked tired. I suspected the city boss knew what was coming.

“
Why,” Gage asked, “is this woman so vindictive? It’s become increasingly clear that this whole business is directed at you. The Beast was working his way toward you, killing people who were closer and closer to you each time. Railwalker Morgan says Hannah Caine is really Helena Crichton. That may well be, but this isn’t a campaign to reclaim her lost power in Bay City. This is revenge, revenge against you, and I for one don’t buy that it’s only for the People’s Takeover. It’s more than that. It’s personal. So I’m asking you: Why?”

Roth sat back in the chair and scrubbed a hand across his face. I said nothing, stood by listening, watching. For a moment I thought Roth was going to tell Gage to fuck off. Then he sighed and began to speak. His voice was low, hoarse.

“
I had an affair with her,” he said. “This was back just before the Takeover. I used her to get information on Crichton, his plans, his security routines.”

That hung in the air for a while, all three of us silent.

I could see it in my mind, the ambitious woman preparing to transfer her loyalties from the fading star to the rising one; the future city boss letting a potentially troublesome partner go down with her original ship. Twenty-seven years ago, I was what, nine at the time? Roth would not have warned her ahead of time when the Takeover was about to happen, I realized; and when the fighting started, she’d have been trapped with Crichton’s forces. And later reported killed. It was a shitty thing to do, even if the woman was doing something shitty herself.

“
That would explain something of her motive,” said Gage.

The cold lead weight in my stomach had just gotten heavier and colder.

“
You told me,” I said, “that the Crichtons hadn’t been able to have children, that the child she was carrying when she supposedly died was a sort of miracle child for them.” I saw Gage’s eyes widen as he realized the implications of my question. Roth’s expression didn’t change. “Could it have been yours?”

Of course, Roth would have thought of that as soon as he realized Hannah Caine had once been Helena Crichton. “I don’t know.” He sighed. “I don’t think so. But I don’t know.” He scrubbed his hands over his face again.

Could the Beast have been his own son? I couldn’t blame him for not wanting to think that. Hell, I didn’t want to think that the madwoman who had raised that monster, had engineered this campaign of killing and revenge, might be my mother. Was the Beast my half-brother? And I had killed him? Gods damn. Maybe I could form a club with Auden.

“
Thank you for your candor, Boss Roth,” said Gage. He shook himself, and turned to me. “We should get moving.”

Auden and I departed the tower with two uniformed guards, in a full-sized auto. On the way, the questions screamed in my mind. What did Morgan’s discovery mean? The photos were both clearly my mother, and looked exactly like the picture in my crane bag, like that spirit that had saved my life several times. Yet if my mother had become Helena Hebat, and then married Wendell Crichton, who or what was the spirit I’d seen? Not a sending from a living woman, surely, for a sending appears the real age and appearance of the sender, while my ghostly visitor had never aged. If my mother was dead, and my visitant truly was her spirit, who was this Helena Hebat Crichton, who had become Hannah Caine? Why was my mother’s picture on her ID?

Since I couldn’t construct any logical answers to these questions, I slowed my breathing and silently repeated a chant for a while, giving the whole question over to my unconscious, hopefully leaving my conscious mind free to focus on the solvable problems of here and now: pursuing and capturing the woman responsible for all this violence. It worked. Mostly.

Across the Fourth Street Bridge, we entered the south side. Shorter buildings, adobe brick and plasteel, strip malls. It wasn’t as grim as Alphabet City, but it had its own gritty, depressing charm. The Accord Hotel was one of the taller buildings, a full six floors, built in the Velasco style, which was popular eighty years ago. The adobe bricks were tinted a rust red, the plascrete ornamentation around doors and windows and the edge of the roof a dull gray. The metal frame on the wire-reinforced plasglass door was probably dark brown originally, though now it was a muddy non-color where it wasn’t chipped and rusted. Graffiti edged around the corners from the alleys on either side.

Knowing the skills of the Beast, and what abilities this woman had shown, I had to go first. None of Gage’s men would have stood a chance. And my Bear wasn’t with me, except perhaps in spirit. I’d have to be my own Bear now, as many other Bricks had done before me. I drew my gun and stepped through the door. Auden followed right behind me.

The carpet in the lobby was sticky. I advanced on the cowering desk clerk, keeping him covered. “Where’s Caine?” I demanded.

His eyes got even bigger, if that was possible. He caught my eye for just a moment, then stared down the barrel of the gun.

“
P-p-penthouse...” he stammered.

We left Rogers to cover him and rode up to the top floor. We burst through the door, guns at the ready, to find ourselves facing an empty suite. She’d been here. Bloodstained clothes littered the place. Some power bar wrappers and a couple of empty water bottles. And nothing else.

Auden and I looked at each other.

“
Where?” I asked.

Auden shook his head, shrugged. “She must have places that aren’t on the books, or are in some other name.”

Auden’s radio buzzed. He answered it, and cursed roundly. Then he said, “We’re just clearing up here. No, nothing. Yeah, meet you there.” He switched the radio off and turned back to me. “Rochelle Roth is missing.”

“
Caine’s got her.”

He nodded grimly. “That’s Gage’s assumption. Turns out the girl had a lesson this morning and never came back from it.”

“
If she’s not going to kill the girl immediately, she’ll have to stash her somewhere.”

“
Why not kill her now?”

“
I’m sure she’d love to kill her, but she’s more valuable as bait for Roth than as a body. It’s Roth she really wants. She can always kill the daughter later. Or better yet, in front of Roth.”

“
You really think this bitch is that sick-minded?”

“
Auden, the Beast was her idea, her creation. What do you think?”

We stood in silence for a moment, considering.

“
What about Crichton’s old properties?” I asked. “Maybe a remote estate, a summer house, something like that?”

“
No,” he said. “Crichton’s estate was razed. There’s a factory there now.” He sighed. “Shit,” he said, his head coming up sharply. “Cali Isle. Come on!”

Trusting his instinct for the local scene, I followed him out of the hotel. “Kali Isle?” I asked, once we were under way. “As in the Death Goddess?”

“
No, Cali as in ‘Hot Cali.’”

I looked at him and waited.

“
There’s an island a couple of miles or so to the south,” he said. “Supposedly haunted. Fishermen avoid it like the plague, but every so often some teenagers row over to it and scare the bejeezus out of themselves. I guess it was part of the mainland at one time. There was a luxury hotel out there, the Hotel California. Supposedly owned by a famous band who were into some demonic cult, back before the Crash. Somehow it survived the quakes of the Crash, but there was a lot of damage, too, and the sign lost some letters. So now it says ‘Hot Cali.’ Used to be people called it ‘Hot Cali Island,’ but it’s just Cali Isle these days.” He glanced over and trailed off, seeing my angry expression. “What?” he asked.

“
Let’s go,” I said, and we hustled into the auto.

“
What?” he repeated as Guardsman Rogers gunned the engine.

“
You’ve got a supernatural killer on your hands, and a reputedly haunted island a stone’s throw from the city, and you didn’t see fit to mention this?”

“
Didn’t think of it.” He shrugged.

“
So what made you think of it now?”

“
Crichton owned it. Had part of it cleaned up and refurbished at one time, but somebody died at one of his parties out there or something and he closed it down again. If Caine is really Helena Crichton...”

“
She’d know the place,” I finished for him. “And it would make a perfect bolt-hole.”

48. THE ISLAND

She walks through the corridors of the ruined hotel. The cavernous room she enters holds many ancient treasures, all, she thinks, valuable to others for their monetary worth, but their true value meaningless to any but her. So this, she thinks, is what her life has come to. A final stand, in a rotting building amongst the meaningless trappings of former glory. She could kill the Railwalker, probably, and may yet. But what would that avail? The tyrant Roth is without honor. If the Railwalker dies, he will send another mercenary, and then another. She might kill them all, one by one, but what will that mean? Eventually they will come in force and drag her down by sheer numbers. She is old now, beyond her prime, and there will be no others like Varger, her favored son.

It was the Railwalker, she thought, who had done this. And he her own blood, too. Without him her plan would have succeeded. Roth would be beneath her heel, and she would be the true boss of the city, returning it to its former glory. Now that glory would never happen.

It was infuriating. If she had only broken free when she was younger, rid herself of that small-minded, conventional bitch she had been earlier in life, she might have made the Railwalker hers as surely as Varger had been. Instead he had grown up to become her nemesis. Galling.

Ah, well, she could not have done, in those days. The boy was born several years before she had made her way to the Mayacan mountains of the south, performed the needful rituals. When she had cast off those useless parts of herself, expelled them forever, her conscience, her empathy, her compassion, she had seen them personified briefly, retreating before her new self’s fierceness. And the freedom that followed its dispersal...

And it was dispersed, she was sure. The twinges she’d experienced since, the momentary convictions that the little bitch was looking over her shoulder and judging her, or that she was out there, somewhere, doing... something. That had all been nonsense, a natural anxiety provoked by the seriously dangerous nature of the game she was playing.

At the other end of the corridor a form appears. The vision is a woman, young, elegant, in a white blouse with the collar turned up.

Be gone, ghost, she tells this vision. You are long dead, and have no power here.

The figure vanishes, leaving her alone in the dank hallway.

49. WOLF

Cresting the hill on the deserted coast road, Rogers slowed and our auto rolled down the other side of the hill, the electric motor only a quiet purr. Before us stretched the salt marsh, a field of fog with stands of reeds and cordgrass punctuating it. On the horizon, the dark shape of an island, which became less prominent as we descended, finally fading into the fog. Rogers extinguished the headlights and turned on dim yellow fog lights. Auden sat forward in the shotgun seat, peering into the darkness and fog. “Slow,” he said, though Rogers was already proceeding slowly. “I see him.”