Ghost Dance (21 page)

The welcome screen flashed on - and a second later, the phone rang. For a disoriented second she thought it was him, somehow anticipating her need. But the number was unfamiliar.

She hesitated, finger poised over 'end call'.

"You should probably hear what he has to say," Raven said, and though she'd determined not to take his advice again, she pressed 'answer' and put the phone to her ear.

"Alexandra," Hammond said, "stay on the line, do you hear me? Stay on the damn line."

She hadn't spoken to Hammond since Eastern Europe, but his voice instantly took her back to that time, in the grim prison in a nameless forest, when she'd realised there would be no escape for her.

"We can mend this," Hammond said. "It's one hell of a mess, but it's not irreparable."

"What, we're just going to kiss and make up?" she choked.

There was a small but telling pause before Hammond said, "You've got amends to make, no question. But maybe I pushed you too hard and too fast. I know I'm not blameless."

He was talking like a hostage negotiator, she realised. Making promises that were meant to be comforting, not kept. But there were things she could learn from him, too.

"All right," she said. "Tell me what I can do."

"Good. Good. That's the right attitude, Alexandra. Well, I guess telling you to give yourself up isn't going to fly."

"You guessed right."

"Then let's talk about PD."

"I am sorry about that. But no harm no foul, right?"

This time, the pause at the other end of the line was longer. "You think he's with us," Hammond said eventually.

Alex felt the first twinge of unease. "Well, yeah. Curtis knew where we were. She must have called in reinforcements."

"She did. By the time they arrived, you were gone - and so was PD."

"Well get him back then! You know who's got him and where they're based."

"Really? That never occurred to us. As it turns out, he's not
at
their office on Haight. And we were lucky they let us look. Because how exactly, Alexandra, do you think we can go about getting a search warrant? We can't go public with the fact we've been spying on a domestic religion. The first amendment nuts will have their usual hysterics. They'll say it's Waco all over again, and this time the shit will rain down on us, not the feds."

Alex felt a knot of something she didn't want to recognise as guilt in her stomach. "You're a covert fucking agency - do something covert and get him out."

"Perhaps we could, if we knew where they'd taken him."

"If anyone can find him, you can."

She could imagine Hammond's thin-lipped smile on the other end of the line. "You've seen the Croatoans, Alexandra. PD told me what you saw. Who do you think is better placed to find PD - us or you?"

The knot of guilt tightened unpleasantly. She fidgeted a moment, not sure how to reply. She'd stopped to talk in one of the quieter cross streets, foot braced against the steep gradient. She'd been keeping her voice down as she spoke, but she realised that in the last few minutes, no one had passed.

It was a quiet street, but it was the middle of the day. And now she thought about it, there hadn't been a single car, either.

"Alexandra," Hammond said. "Damn it, are you still there?" There was a note in his voice, something off - too anxious.

She dropped the phone and stamped on it. It cracked beneath her heel but the screen remained lit, like a beacon, which she realised far too late was exactly what it was. As soon as she'd switched it on they'd been able to track it.

She leapt to the side seconds before the hooks of the taser scraped against the pavement where she'd been standing. She smelt the ozone tang of the electric charge which had been meant to pass through her body and, for a second, came face-to-face with her attacker. He was an SFPD beat officer, but his eyes were blanks, hidden behind the heavy black of night-vision goggles. A wolf's snout stuck out beneath them, teeth bared in a snarl.

They'd found a way to see her, even hidden behind the veil of the spirit world.

She ran, gasping for breath after only a few paces, her chest too tight with panic to take in the oxygen she needed. She heard the pounding of other footsteps behind her and when she pelted past a cross-street she could see more men waiting for her there. They were only just jerking into motion. Perhaps they hadn't expected her to spot the trap before she'd sprung it.

She descending the hill, each step a mini plummet and each landing an impact that jarred from her foot to her spine, but her pursuers drew nearer no matter how fast she ran. And then she saw the road block ahead of her, more SFPD uniforms behind it, wolf tongues lolling below black night-vision goggles.

She was boxed in. There were cops at each end of the street, and a solid wall of buildings at either side.

But of course she was being a fool. The buildings were solid to them - not to her. And they might be able to see her in the spirit realm, but they couldn't travel into it.

She was running so fast that stopping tumbled her to the pavement with all the momentum of her flight. The bullet graze on her side opened and bled. The men behind her were so close she could smell their sweat, and then they were over her, leaping to avoid her prone body. She heard them curse and one of them fired, but the taser went wide and in the minute it took them to come to their own, more controlled, halt she rose to her feet and ran straight at the nearest house.

It was only as her shoulder struck the wooden slat and she felt the grain of the wood against her bare arm that she realised what she should have noticed far earlier. The spirit realm was fading - or rather she was, fading back into the mundane world. She'd seen the policemen as men rather than wolves. Reality was reasserting itself.

She heard the click of multiple weapons being cocked behind her and she closed her eyes and pushed against the wall with both her mind and her body. She felt resistance, the painful press of wood against bruised skin and then, finally, something gave - and slow as molasses her body seeped through and into the house beyond.

She'd entered a white-painted living room. Bland, motel-print posters flicked past as she sprinted into the corridor beyond. The house was empty but her pursuers would be through the door soon. Though Hammond might not want to cause an incident by raiding the Croatoan headquarters, she was sure he'd risk almost anything to get her back.

The corridor led to a kitchen, floor-to-ceiling windows looking out onto the overgrown yard beyond. She tugged at the doors, but they were locked tight, and when she leaned against the glass it was just glass, cold and impenetrable against her shoulder.

The spirit world was gone entirely now. But she'd been living in the real one for twenty-three year, damn it. She wasn't helpless. She felt along the shelf above the door then yanked open kitchen draws, scattering silverware on the floor before she found the key in a small bowl beside the sink. Her fingers fumbled with it as she heard a booming impact behind her, the sound of something metal hitting the front door.

The key scratched shrilly across the glass before it slid into the keyhole. It turned easily and she had her hand flexed to push open the door when she saw what waited for her outside. The brick walls of the yard were swarming with uniformed men, night-vision goggles beetle-black over their eyes.

She snapped a look over her shoulder, expecting to find Raven standing there, ready to give advice she shouldn't follow and would anyway. But Raven was lost to her in the world he inhabited and she had only visited.

The men outside were over the wall. She stepped back from the window as they crept closer. They were being cautious, still unsure of her powers, but that bought her five minutes at most. And the men at the front would be through the door before then. The only escape was sideways - through the rows of houses.

Her hand drifted to her pocket and she didn't know why until she pulled out the packet half full of brown flakes. It was the remains of the peyote PD had given her in the restaurant.

She opened the bag and tipped the contents onto her palm. It was a large dose. If she took it right now, she might slip into the spirit world fast enough to make her escape. But the last dose she'd taken had been smaller and the effects had lasted for nearly a day. Each time she travelled, she travelled further and for longer. If she took the drug this time, she might travel so far that she could never return. That was the fate she'd fled the Bureau to escape.

Outside the window, the men crept nearer, faces intent as they hunted her. The sounds coming from the front door had changed, softer now as the wood splintered and gave.

She could return to the Bureau. They wouldn't kill her - but she'd never be free again. Or she could take the drug and take her chances in the world it opened to her.

Her hand shook as she lifted it to her lips. The peyote stuck to her tongue and the roof of her mouth, all the saliva having dried at the prospect of taking it. She ducked her head under the tap to sluice it down with water, wincing at the taste.

As soon as it was in her throat, something insubstantial but powerful forced its way past and through her. More suddenly than she could have imagined, the spirit world was back and Raven with it. He looked like the man she'd first seen, harmless and a little absurd. She wondered if it was his choice to seem that way, or if her mind had simply refused to face up to the truth of him again.

"Well, about bloody time," he said, grinning as he held out his hand.

She didn't hesitate before taking it this time, but she shut her eyes as he pulled, letting him lead her where he wanted.

She didn't know how long the journey had taken, but when they stopped she found herself on a narrow wooden pier with the Bay to either side of her, a sailing ship that looked two centuries old tossing and tearing apart in a storm that moved only the sea directly beneath it.

Ahead of her, a figure walked away across the water, curly hair hanging lank in the salt spray. Though she'd grown used to seeing him every time she travelled here, she still found him disturbing. He was linked to her in some way she couldn't understand and she felt his presence even when she turned away from him. Behind her the city burned, but the streets were empty of wolves. She'd escaped, she just didn't know the price.

She squinted her eyes and tightened something less tangible inside her mind, trying to return to the mundane world, at least a little.

"Word of warning," Raven said. "Time doesn't pass here, it lingers. In the spirit realm you're both now and then. If you're careless - and I have known you to be careless - you could step into the past rather than the present. And then where would you be?"

She shivered, understanding what he meant. To the spirit world, San Francisco had been most vivid when it was torn apart by earthquake and fire. If she let it, it would spit her out into that moment of history. She thought very hard about her own time instead, its speed and cruelty as well as its comforts and conveniences.

The ancient sailing ship paled to a phantom, the modern tugs and pleasure boats hardening into visibility around her.

"So," Raven said, slouching against a railing. "Your daring - if somewhat last-minute - escape has freed you from the clutches of the CIA. What now?"

Yes. What now? "I need to get away. I need money."

He smiled. "And how do you intend to get it?"

"I don't know. I thought you could tell me."

His smile dropped. "Oh. Well, no. The acquisition of wealth has never been one of my top priorities."

"I don't want to be wealthy. I just want to have enough money to live." There was something else she wanted, too, but she was very carefully not thinking about it. She didn't
want
to want it. She didn't want to care.

"That's a laudable goal," Raven said. "Good luck with that."

She didn't know whether he was answering the words she'd spoken or the ones locked inside her head. She was sure he could get her the money if he wanted. She was pretty certain he could do whatever he damn well pleased. But it was equally obvious he wouldn't.

"Fine," she said. "Then can you make Hammond go away? Or make it so he can't find me?"

His brow furrowed. "Why would I do that?"

"To help me out?"

"And why would I want to do that?" For a moment, the black eyes staring back at her were in a different face, less friendly and more frightening. Then he shook his head and was just a man again.

"Please," she said. "I need your help."

"You can have whatever you want," he told her. "You just have to tell me the truth about what that is."

She wanted to go back to her old life, but she knew that wasn't possible. Not just because of what she'd done, but because of what she'd seen. She couldn't live that life and pretend she didn't know what lay beneath it.

And, of course, she wanted to take back what she'd done to PD. She wanted to undo her betrayal, which had turned out to be more profound than she'd intended.

"Fuck you," she said. "And fuck him. He deserved what I did. He never cared about me. Christ,
you
showed me that. You told me it was the truth."

Raven smiled. "The truth isn't singular, Alex. Only angels and demons believe that it is, and I'm a conscientious objector in their war. The spirit world showed you that you craved love so much, you'd see it even when it wasn't there. PD might actually care for you, and that would still be true."

"And does he?" Alex asked.

"That's not your truth to know. Maybe he feels nothing at all. Maybe you were just an easy lay. So tell me, Alex, what do you want?"

She sighed. "I don't want PD to suffer because of what I've done. I want to find him."

"Now that," he said, "I can help you with."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

PD woke reaching for a weapon which was no longer there. His head felt too heavy for his shoulders and his thoughts were sluggish, as if the gears of his mind were gummed up. He opened his eyes, only to squeeze them shut again as the bright light started a painful throbbing at the base of his skull. He felt around his head, probing for lumps, but there was nothing. He'd been drugged then.