The Demon Hunters (31 page)

I don’t think he saw me and Royal. He
zeroed in on Gia.

He lifted his head. His guttural,
heavily accented voice rasped, “Have you come to kill
me?”

Gia’s eyes flared, but she quickly
masked her surprise. She slowly eased into the hard-back chair near
the head of the bed, folding her hands on her lap. Her gentle smile
surprised me. She looked entirely different, more humane. “Now why
would you think that, Herr Stadelmann?”

“
You have not? Ah, well, no
matter then.” He gave her a tiny smile as he let his head fall
back. "Your presence honors me. Perhaps God - who knows all things
and sees all things, and
made
all things - yes, even you - perhaps he rewards me
for my long years of searching?"

"I don't know what you mean, Herr
Stadelmann."

Neither did I, and I dearly wanted
to.

He lifted a hand and
touched her cheek with the fingertips, let it fall back. "Your
skin. . . . Your skin is beautiful, like alabaster, but so warm to
the touch.” He smiled. “How you have changed.”

“
Changed? What do you
mean?”

“
I saw the engravings in
Nagka. Your evolution since your forefathers settled in Burma is
astounding."

Gia paused before speaking
again and a slight frown creased her brow. "Do you know what I am,
Herr Stadelmann?"

“
I know you are not Homo
sapiens,” he said, winking conspiratorially. “But do not fear I
will share your secret. Who would believe me?”

Holy cow! Breathe, Tiff,
breathe.

She leaned back, studying his face,
her hands clenched together, then nodded. “I think I can trust you,
Herr Stadelmann.”

“
You have nothing to fear
from an old man who will not see many more sunrises,” he
responded.

She regarded him seriously for moment,
then leaned in again, the gentle smile back in place. “Herr
Stadelmann, I would like to talk to you about the child from
Myanmar. From Burma.”

The poor old man reared up in the bed.
"Do you know the boy? Have you brought him back to me?" he gasped
eagerly with a voice like the rasp of sandpaper. His pulse thudded
in his throat.

God, don’t let him die on
us!
I prayed. I doubted he could endure too
much excitement in his condition.

Gia kept her cool. “I’m
afraid not, but I want to find him. Please, Herr Stadelmann, if
you

”

"His skin is like yours, so I suppose
age has nothing to do with it, eh?” he interrupted, smiling. "When
I could keep him clean. Dirty little monkey, pawing through the
jungle, still hates clothes and shoes; the shoes were most
difficult." He lapsed back, panting a little.

Gia gently held a hand which looked
like crepe paper. He immediately put the back of hers to his lips
and kissed it. "Ah, lovely lady," he crooned. "I wish I had time
remaining to hear your story, but I do not, nor the strength to put
it to paper. I thought I knew, but they were fairy tales. The boy
could tell me so much, if he could talk. But he has no voice, you
see.” A tear brimmed in the corner of one eye. "I miss my boy. Have
you seen him?"

I listened, enthralled. The old man
sounded a hair away from rapture.

Gia leaned closer to look into his
eyes. "I've been looking for him, to help him. If you tell me what
you know, perhaps I can find him."

He dropped her hand and twisted his
head away. "Don't do that. He tried to do that, but he has not the
strength. He is really quite weak.” He looked back at her fiercely.
"He is powerless against that evil man."

"What man?" I said. Gia turned her
head to glare at me.

She retrieved his hand. "Herr
Stadelmann, Hans, can you start at the beginning and tell me of the
boy, and this man? I would like to find your boy and bring him back
to you."

Liar, liar, pants on
fire.
She had no such intention.

“
We mean him no harm. I
give you my word. We want to help him, protect him. He is
kin.”

He stared at her, not quite looking
her in the eyes. Then he licked his lips and nodded. "I found the
boy - I named him Jacob - in what is now called Myanmar. I bought
him from a local tribe. I cannot describe my joy in the
acquisition. I came to love Jacob as my son."

He paused, went on. “I taught him the
ways of civilization as best I could, although I would rather have
left him in his primitive state. But for his own survival, he needs
must know how to live in our world. I gave him all I could.” He
blinked back tears. "I became his as much as he became mine. Jacob
was my world, the reason for my existence."

His voice turned fierce. "Philip Vance
took him from me, and used him."

I stopped breathing
again.
Vance.

Thin tears ran down his old,
corrugated face. "Philip Vance is a wealthy man with a personal
agenda. He hunts your kind and slays them. Can you imagine his glee
when he found one of yours, who could lead him to others of your
kind? He took my boy and traveled the world, country to country,
city to city, and wherever Jacob senses his brothers, the assassins
strike. I followed them until I could no longer.” He stopped
abruptly, eyeing Gia with alarm. "Is he hunting you?"

"If Vance knows of me, he has not come
for me yet.”

"Finding him should not be
difficult. He owns a chain of employment agencies for executives.
It is his . . . what do you call it . . . his
front?
In the normal course of
events, he would personally have little to do with the management
of a business, but on this venture, this vendetta, when he must
remain in one location, setting up an agency lends legitimacy to
his presence. And, businessman as he is, if his agencies do well he
leaves them in place when he travels on."

“
But why is Jacob doing
this? He is responsible for many deaths.”

Stadelmann closed his eyes. “I do not
know, but I believe Vance has somehow tricked Jacob. There is no
anger or bitterness in the child. I cannot imagine why he would
want to kill his own family.”

"Does Vance use his real
name?"

"Oh, yes: the Philip Vance Executive
Agency."

Hans Stadelmann fell silent. Typical
of one his age and poor health, he had abruptly fallen
asleep.

Chapter
Twenty-
Six

Gia looked paler than normal. Perhaps
she wanted to vent demonstratively, but couldn’t with all the
people milling in the airport lounge. I waited for her favorite
line, the one about neglecting to tell her everything, but she
surprised me.

“
Good. I know what to do
now.”

We’d sat in silence during the drive
back from Stadelmann’s house. I thought, from the way Royal
squeezed my hand now and then, we were thinking the same thing.
Should we tell Gia what we knew of Vance? I didn’t see how we could
avoid it. How would she react? She would be angry, but if she
didn’t fly into a manic rage, I could handle it. I
hoped.

I decided Royal could do the dirty
deed. I wasn’t saying a word.

Maybe the fact Royal told
her, not me, made the difference. He was
so
smooth as he told her what we
discovered, our conclusions, and cautioned her we could be wrong.
He didn’t present reasons why we didn’t so much as mention Vance
before now, or apologize for not doing so. He was the professional
investigator, passing information to the client: Vance was a lead
we were still pursuing when we thought to go see Hans
Stadelmann.

I was not a happy camper. Giving Vance
to the cops was no longer an option. His fate had been taken out of
our hands.

“
Describe the Emerson’s
interior,” Gia said.

***

Five hours after leaving Professor
Stadelmann sleeping peacefully, Royal and I sat in his truck
outside the Megaplex in downtown Clarion. Royal’s copper-brown eyes
were not quite as lustrous; they had a dark cast to them as he
watched the Emerson Building.

Gia did not make an appointment with
Vance. Royal confirmed he was in his office and Gia walked right
in. No doubt she influenced the secretary and anyone else she came
across.

“
Do you think she’s hurting
him?”

“
She said she will
not.”

True, but could she keep it together
when facing the man who had so many murdered, and could hold her
Rio captive, or killed Rio, or know what happened to him? I didn’t
know if I could were I in her position.

“
From what I’ve seen, she
doesn’t have too firm a handle on her temper. She could lose
it.”

“
I do not think so, not
this time.”

I stared at his face in profile. He
shifted in the front passenger seat, twisting toward me to return
my gaze. “You need not worry; she has control of her emotions. She
could make Vance and his men disappear, but she wants to bring
closure to this world as well as mine.”

I swallowed although my mouth was dry.
How would I feel if Royal suddenly disappeared and I thought
someone took him from me, not knowing what happened to him and
dreading the worse? How would I feel about that person? What would
I do when I laid hands on them?

I didn’t know, but it would not be
pretty.

Royal broke in on my morbid musing.
“Tiff, what is bothering you, apart from the obvious?”

I let my right arm flop out the open
widow, making a helpless gesture because I wasn’t sure how to
reply. “I was just thinking. I don’t know if I could control myself
if I were her. If it were me instead of Gia Sabato and you instead
of Rio, I . . . I just don’t know. . . .”

“
And that makes you feel .
. . what?”

Although I frowned in the direction of
the Emerson Building, I was somewhere else. I was in Royal’s arms,
in a cellar below a palace in Bel-Athaer. “Do you remember when you
found me in Morté Tescién? You said you knew I wouldn’t accuse you
of murder unless I really believed it, because I’m a good person.
You said you had faith in me.” I dropped my gaze to the hot
pavement. “I’m not a real good person, Royal.”

His lips twitched. “We cannot all be
Mother Teresa, Tiff.”

I shrugged one shoulder. “When you’re
in a relationship, you’re always learning something new about your
partner, and sometimes it makes you look inside yourself. I don’t
always like what I see in me.”

His hand slid along my
shoulder
.
“You
don’t say that like it is a revelation.”

It wasn’t, and I was taken aback by
how everything just came out my mouth. I snorted. “It’s not, but
this is the first time I heard myself say it out loud.”

I slumped in the seat and changed the
subject. “She’s an awful long time in there.”

The heat began to sap me. I turned on
the engine, rolled the windows up and switched on the
air-conditioning, leaning forward to let the air from the side vent
cool my face.

By shifting my head a little, I could
see Brenda reflected in the side mirror as she stared right at
me.

I straightened up. “There’s
another one,” I observed as a black Cadillac drove into the alley
behind Murphy’s. “The third. Maybe
she’s
in trouble.”

Royal looked ahead through the
windscreen. “I doubt it.”

She’d been in there half an hour and
the cars started arriving fifteen minutes ago. She didn’t share her
plan with us, and here we were, waiting for her to come out the
Emerson Building. Or not.

“
What are we gonna do if
she doesn’t come out soon?” All sixteen of Vance’s goons could be
in there with Vance and Gia.

Royal shrugged.

I almost thumped my fist down in
exasperation, but just in time remembered this was Royal’s truck,
not my beat-up old Subaru.

The neon lights from the Megaplex
flicked in the corner of one eye, and the sun pierced the corner of
the other. We were parked fifty feet from the Emerson’s garage.
Nobody would look twice at us. Just another couple hanging out in
their big red truck.

I thought, again, about
Gia’s conversation with Stadelmann. He didn’t know what
Gia was any more than I did, but he knew Gia and
Jacob were the same. He knew what they could do.
"Don't do that. He tried to do that, but he
hasn't the power.”
Gia tried to influence
him, just as she did me and Royal, but Stadelmann knew. He told her
not to do it.

“
Have you come to kill
me?”
Why did he think she would kill him?
Because he knew too much?

My spine stiffened as a
tall figure walked through the crowd of people who headed for the
theater. She stood out in her beige linen pantsuit, the cream
gloves and big Panama hat. Men, woman, children, they instinctively
drifted out of her path, but every person eyed her. She walked to
the truck.
The rear door opened, slammed
shut. “We can go now,” Gia said.