Robert Charrette - Arthur 01 - A Prince Among Men (20 page)

Magnus ignored her comment. "You and Mr. Kun will have to continue on your own for now. You will, of course, continue to have the Department's full computer and financial support."

"I'm sure."

"Bring your sleeper in, Doctor."

"Right." She cut the connection. Without turning she said, "We were close, Kun. So very close. And they're so far away, they have no idea at all. Won't even look at the evidence. It's up to us, Kun. We've got to find him by ourselves."

"Is he really Arthur?"

"Who else would he be?"

"Why here, then? This is America, not England."

"1 don't know." She shook her head, her face empty of its usual arrogance. "I wish I did. It might tell me something that I could use."

"Maybe he can explain it."

"Maybe, but I doubt it. In any case, we have to find him before we can ask him."

He didn't want to, but he knew he had to ask. "Can you track him magically?"

"No. I have nothing of Ms to use."

"Nothing from the museum will help?"

She turned to face him, smiling slightly. "You know more about this stuff than you like to let on. Normally, one would expect that something in the exhibit was used as a key to call to the sleeper. Law of Contagion and all that. But I couldn't feel any resonance with any particular individual."

"Could the resonance have been blocked? You said you sensed more than one hand had shaped energies there."

"Perhaps." She thought for a while. "I don't think so, though. I didn't feel like I was facing a block. Maybe the connections were just too old, too tenuous for me to feel."

"So you can't find him with magic."

"No."

Good. They'd have to do it the old-fashioned way. His

way.

*
*
*

Charley Gordon hated it when his beeper went off in the middle of the night. He ordered the lights on, wincing when the computer obeyed him efficiently and blasted with full wattage. "Lower lights," he pleaded, then ordered it to connect a line to whoever wanted him.

"Captain Milton," the machine informed him.

"Charley? You there?"

"Yeah, Captain."

"Sorry to wake you."

I'll bet. Milton didn't sound apologetic; he sounded as if he enjoyed it. "What is it?"

"The slasher's hit again."

Huh? "Two days early. You sure we ain't got a copycat?"

"Don't think so."

"Be right down."

"Coram Ave. The park," the captain said before he cut the connection.

Charley passed the word to Manny while he dressed. Manny said he'd meet Charley at the scene.

Two days early? Had to be a copycat. The Barrington slasher was a real stickler for timing.

When he got to the scene and saw the bodies, he didn't need the forensics boys to tell him that this was the real slasher. Nobody but the cops knew what body parts the slasher took away with him. Charley found a trash can and gave it Ms breakfast. He should have known better than to have eaten.

"We got a witness this time," Milton said to Charley after he'd stopped puking. "Said he saw the killer."

The captain didn't sound as though it was the break they'd all been hoping for, and once Charley talked to the witness, he understood why. No DA was gonna buy in to an eight-foot-tall, bat-winged lizard.

"I am tired of being interrupted," Sorli said as he sat in the chair. "Can't you think of some better way to ask your

incessant questions other than demanding these pilgrimages to your office?"

Pamela noted that the monitors in the chair reported that Sttrli was truly agitated and not just putting on a show. Good. Maybe he'd let something slip.

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

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

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

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

"This man! This man!" Damn, she was flustered. "It's been a month since his—what did you call it?—awakening and you still haven't learned who he is."

"Untrue."

Bastard. Always with a trump card. "All right. Who
is
this dangerous man?"

"His name is Artos."

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

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

"How do you know all this?"

"Confidential sources."

Was he baiting her on purpose? "You work for me, you little bastard. You will tell me where you are getting your information."

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

"Who else are you working with?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Am I wise to trust you?"

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

"Not yet."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Return the balance to where it was."

"Possibly. I can make no promises."

"Can I trust you, Sorli?"

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

Truth, the monitor said. Rock-solid truth.

Pamela would not let her world be destroyed by magic.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Good night it is. Two for Old Shaggs tonight."

She screamed, but the wind tore away the sound.

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

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

The bastard strangling her actually laughed.

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

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

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

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

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

Holger hacked his way into the university computer net.

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