Dying Bites: The Bloodhound Files-1 (40 page)

He stares at me levelly for a moment before replying. “Yes. That’s what they do there.”

“So I guess burning six million people alive wasn’t enough, huh? After all, you’ve got almost a million of us still left. What’s the plan—let us breed for a few more generations, get the numbers up, then trade us in for what’s behind dimensional portal number two?

Or maybe you’re shopping around, seeing if you can get a better deal from some other otherworldly horror—”

“Jace. Please. Do you want an explanation or not?”

I rein myself in. “An explanation. Sure, those are always more entertaining than the truth.”

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He ignores the jab. “Ghatanothoa is not a being you can communicate with, let alone strike a bargain. He is completely, utterly alien, so different from anything we understand that no sentient being from this dimension is capable of even perceiving him. We think the legend of Medusa is a dim echo of this creature, of something so hideous that it transforms whatever looks at it.”

I remember the smell that came from the hole in the floor, and my reaction. “You’re saying this thing can turn people to stone?”

“Worse. Seeing this being changes the viewer into a living mummy. Their outer skin becomes a dry, leathery husk, their muscles and internal organs go completely dormant—but their brain survives. They can still hear, see, think. They’re trapped, aware but in a state of physical suspended animation, one that lengthens their lives indefinitely. The condition seems to be permanent—at least, we haven’t been able to reverse it.”

That temple was submerged for hundreds of centuries; whoever looked at the big G last did so a very long time ago. And if Cassius is to be believed, at least one of those people has been alive and helpless ever since.

“We have a scroll in our possession that will supposedly reverse the mummification, but we haven’t been able to get it to work. And extensive testing is . . . problematic.”

“Severe shortage in the mummy market?”

“Unfortunately not.” He sighs. “You asked me once how I was so sure the Impaler was insane. It’s because we know that exposure to certain artifacts used in HPLC causes mental instability, even in pires and thropes—but especially in human beings. The scroll is one such artifact, the Shining Trapezohedron another.”

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That explains Stoker’s disconnected episodes on Rapa Nui. I wonder how sane he was before he stole the trapezohedron. “So that’s why he used the robot probe. But it doesn’t tell us what he took from the temple.”

“I swear, Jace, there’s no secret superweapon we’re chasing. We’re trying to stop him, that’s all.”

“Stop him from what? As near as I can tell, he’s accomplished what he set out to do. There aren’t going to be any more ritual murders—he’s completed the spell. For all I know, he now has superpowers and is going to start blasting us with beams from space.”

That sparks a different thought. “Wait. I didn’t see a satellite broadcaster on Mu.”

“It wasn’t in plain sight. We found it a short distance from the temple, behind a boulder. He was probably worried about interference.”

So Roger’s murder was now on the Web, part of the planet’s global memory. People he’d never known would see the footage and shudder, or more likely make bad jokes and scoff at the dismal special effects. Just another random meme in cyberspace. This world’s Roger didn’t sound much better than mine, but I doubt if he deserved that.

“So. Am I under arrest?”

He shakes his head. “I knew you wouldn’t join him, Jace. But I also knew you’d run. You can’t stand being under anyone’s control—you had to find out the truth for yourself. That’s why I was less than honest with you.”

Of course. He’d been playing me all along, poking at my insecurities, setting me up as the perfect stalking horse. And it had worked, too—if Tanaka hadn’t yanked me off the board unexpectedly, Cassius could have intercepted Stoker long before he raised Mu.
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Or maybe I was deluding myself. Stoker managed to slip off Rapa Nui without being caught, and Cassius must have known he was there. Maybe the man really did have a submarine.

“You know, I’m really tired of all this,” I say. “I don’t know what’s true and what’s not. I really wouldn’t be all that surprised if you pulled off your face and revealed you were really Stoker all along. And at this point, I don’t seem to give a damn.”

“I understand how upset you are—”

“No. You really don’t.” I cross my arms. “Gretchen told me you’d been running the NSA since 1935. That means you weren’t just around while the whole genocidal birth pact was going on, you were one of the people in charge. Weren’t you?”

He meets my eyes, looks into them for any trace of forgiveness, and doesn’t find it. He looks away. “Yes.”

I turn away and head for the door. “If I’m not under arrest, I’d appreciate sleeping somewhere other than the brig.”

He doesn’t try to stop me as I leave.

FIFTEEN

It’s been a long, frustrating, gut-churning couple of days. I’ve killed my second person and first human being (and first lizard-woman, I guess); I’ve been knocked out, taken hostage, betrayed, and spent more time on airplanes than I ever have in my life. I grab the first officer I see and harangue him until he takes me to someone with the authority to assign me an empty room, then find the mess hall and demand food. I’m sure all the differences between an aircraft carrier run by supernatural beings and one run by
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human sailors are fascinating, but I’m kind of fed up with fascinating; in fact, I’d gladly shoot somebody for some old-fashioned boring with a side of mundane. After I eat, I stomp back to my bunk and try to sleep.

I can’t. My head feels like it’s stuffed with bees. I finally give up and go in search of something to distract me—aircraft carriers are like floating cities from what I’ve heard. At the very least I’m sure I can find a gym.

I never make it to one, though. I run into Eisfanger first.

He’s walking down a corridor with an oversize mug in his hand, deep in thought. I chase him down and tap him on the shoulder. “Damon!”

He stops and looks at me, startled. “Agent Valchek. I’d, uh, I’d heard you were aboard.”

He looks vaguely guilty, like a friend who’s been meaning to write but hasn’t.

“They have you examining the robot?”

“Yeah. I was just heading back there, actually.”

“Mind if I tag along?”

He hesitates, then shrugs. “Yeah, no, that’s fine.”

He leads me down several decks to an engineering workshop that’s obviously been commandeered. The probe sits on a massive worktable, partially disassembled. Its treads have been cleaned of mud, but a trace of that alien scent still hovers in the air. It’s probably a lot worse for thropes.

“We were hoping for data from its cameras—it’s got quite a sophisticated video setup, actually—but the memory’s been wiped.”

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I nod. “Whatever he grabbed from Ghatanothoa, he doesn’t want us to know about it. I just wonder what could be so dangerous you’d use a god as a guard dog.”

There’s a cable leading from the probe to a video monitor at the end of the worktable. The screen shows nothing but a shifting, grayish blur. “Is this what you pulled from the memory?” I ask.

Eisfanger gives me a strange look, like I’ve just told him the punch line to a joke he doesn’t get. “I told you, the memory was wiped. That’s a live feed from the camera.”

“So the camera’s broken?”

“What are you talking about? We’re right there.” He glances at the probe and gives a little wave.

I frown. “I can’t see a damn thing.”

There’s a laptop plugged into the probe as well. Eisfanger hits a few keys and peers at the screen. “Well, assuming there isn’t something wrong with your vision . . . I’m just checking on the visual parameters the probe’s set for. It’s equipped for both infrared and ultraviolet.” He taps a few more times, then says, “Huh. Assuming these are the default settings, I’d say that whoever was operating this probe was a thrope or a pire. The wavelengths of light it’s utilizing wouldn’t be visible to a human being.”

The implications of what he’s saying hit me like a punch in the gut. “Oh, God damn it,” I whisper. “Eisfanger, how long was the last murder recording broadcasting before they found the broadcaster and shut it down?”

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“I don’t know—an hour at the most. Enough time for it to be downloaded and rebroadcast from dozens of different places. Gretchen says they’re having more trouble than usual finding and shutting down the sites—”

Gretchen. Oh, no.

“Get Cassius!” I shout. “Right now! We have to shut down those sites!”

We’re too late.

Cassius doesn’t waste time, but there’s not a lot he can do. Stoker’s prepared for this; he has hundreds of mirror sites set up all over the Web, bouncing Roger’s murder from one end of the digital universe to the other. He’s added some kind of mystical twist to the file, too, making it nearly impossible to track. A team of government animists tackles the problem, while this warning is posted worldwide in as many languages as possible: WARNING: A video file with the heading “Easter Island Sacrifice” is being disseminated on the Web. Do not view or open this file. While harmless to humans, occult footage visible only to hemovores or lycanthropes has been spliced in. Viewing this footage may result in paralysis or coma. If you experience any of the following symptoms, report to a medical shaman immediately:

Thickening or roughening of the skin

Difficulty in movement

Stiff or unresponsive muscles

If you have a copy of the file in your possession, destroy it.

It doesn’t work, of course. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. The Ghatanothoa effect isn’t instantaneous, at least not when the victim is only exposed to it subliminally; the paralysis creeps in slowly, over the course of a few days. But it’s just as total . . . and just as permanent.

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The navy—on Cassius’ orders—took Tanaka into custody when they picked me up. Unlike me, he’s still in the brig; I haven’t seen him since they took him away.

Until now.

The guard unlocks the door and lets me in. Tanaka’s sitting on his bunk, looking forlorn. He glances up when I enter, then back down again.

I sit down next to him. “It’s a good thing we grabbed that probe from you. Might have even saved a few lives.”

“Are you trying to make me feel guilty?”

“No. I just thought you’d appreciate an update.” I fill him in. He doesn’t ask any questions, just nods from time to time.

“I see,” he says when I’m finished. “So that was his plan. And now, it seems, he has completed it.”

“We’ll see. Cassius, Eisfanger, and I are taking a chopper to the mainland and a jet to D.C. See if the government animists can find a way to reverse the effects, stop this thing. That’s not why I’m here, though.”

I pause. “Look, Tanaka. I don’t blame you for what you did. You were acting in the best interests of your government.”

He nods. “Yes. Following orders. Tell me, Jace—in my position, would you have done the same?”

It’s a hard question. “I don’t know, Tanaka. Maybe. I do know I sort of envy you; at least you know where your loyalties lie.” I get up. “Cassius says you’ll be put on a plane back
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to Japan as soon as the ship hits port. Whatever fallout you have to deal with will come from your people, not ours. It was the best I could do.”

He looks up. “Thank you,” he says simply.

I leave. I have a flight to catch.

Gretchen was one of the first to succumb.

Mystic computer viruses were nothing new. There were ways to detect them, protect yourself from them, destroy them. But this wasn’t regular animist magic; it was HPLC. The soul-shriveling gaze of a god, hidden and encoded in a stream of data—and Gretchen’s job was to study it.

It gets worse. We fly into Washington and are taken straight to the Pentagon. Cassius disappears into high-level meetings while Eisfanger confers with fellow übergeeks and tries to figure out a solution. I spend most of my time drinking coffee, pacing in my hotel room, and beating myself up for how I’d handled the situation.

All of it produces approximately the same result.

Cassius emerges long enough to give me an update, and it isn’t good. The number of people paralyzed worldwide is over a million and climbing. New exposures have finally slowed to a trickle, but the damage has been done. And, unbelievably, there’s worse news yet.

Cassius and I are grabbing a quick lunch in the hotel restaurant before he has to go back to the Pentagon. He stares at me across the table and says, “Our own HPLC

specialists have confirmed it. The Mu site is radiating occult energy, and it’s increasing in direct proportion to the number of paralysis cases.”

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“Sacrifices. They’re feeding him, just like the plague spell fed Shub-Niggurath.”

“Yes. And if he gets strong enough, he’ll manifest fully on this plane. An actual deity.”