The Last Hot Time (25 page)

Kitsune's forearm was distinctly paler than her hand. Doc held her head as gently as he could, looked into her face at close range.

He put a thumb gently to her eyelid, stroked firmly.

The epicanthic fold came away in a curl of tape and makeup.

Doc looked at the stuff on his fingers. He remembered Carmen's eyes, Halloween night. He turned his head.

Patrise was on the floor, his arms and legs out ragdoll-limp, his head cradled in Carmen's lap.

Stagger Lee came out from behind the bar, holding a champagne bottle under each arm. "What the hell—"

"You tell me," Doc said, and showed him the woman he was holding, the eye makeup. "Who is this? This stuff couldn't have made us think she was Kitsune, not by itself."

"Glamour," Stagger said thickly. "This is—I mean, she's —a simulacrum."

Doc said, "A what?"

"A double, a copy."

"So where's Kitsune?"

"Linked to this one. You run one from the other, like selsyn motors. Puppets."

"And what happens if this one dies?"

Stagger gaped at him. He looked around, at McCain, at Lucius, who was sitting up unsteadily. "What do you think happens?"

"Hold on to her," Doc said, "take care of her," and he went to see to Mr. Patrise.

Patrise's temperature was normal, his pulse racing, his face back to its usual unhealthy color. He seemed to be recovering, just utterly exhausted. Carmen's face was wet with tears, and Doc could see the bruises developing on her cheeks and forearms where Patrise, in the grip of the tarantelle, had struck her.

Mr. Patrise said, "Not. . . our. . . Kitsune."

"No, sir."

"Someone should call Chloe," Carmen said, "and tell her Jolie-Marie isn't missing anymore."

"Whisper," Patrise said. "Can we . . . find him?"

Stagger Lee had his arms around the dazed Jolie-Marie, a champagne bottle still clenched in each fist. "With both doubles alive, it'll be easy," he said. "But he'll know that."

"Then ... we must be quick."

"Pavel," McCain said, "get my gear."

"I'll be right there," Doc said, finishing the dressing on Mr. Patrise's gashed wrist.

Mr. Patrise turned his head, looking Doc directly in the face. They were both still for a second, locked like that, and the room quieted around them, but nothing was said.

Doc stood up. "Let's go."

Patrise said, "Stagger. . . we'll want the wine. Don't drop it."

3o where are we going?" Doc said to McCain, who was driving one of the big cars. "Back to Hell?"

McCain gave a short laugh. "Not quite so far down this time." He was wearing a leather jacket, bulky with equipment hung beneath it; on the seat between him and Doc was a black steel crossbow with a telescopic sight. There was going to be no question of powder missing fire.

"The next one on the right," Stagger said from the back of the car.

McCain pulled up in front of a ruined office building, tarnished metal and big smashed windows. There was a doorway onto the littered sidewalk, or at least a dark, square opening. From somewhere beyond, there was faint yellow light, pale as piss on the ice and broken glass. "What else are you getting?"

"Could be a few people close together, but there's no crowd."

Doc said, "Could he be alone with her?"

"Depends on what he wants to show his audience," McCain said, with no humor at all. "Like Stagger said: the Fox is alive, so he knows we're on to that, knows we can find him. So he must want to be found. That brings us to the hard part. Who goes in?"

"What do you mean?"

"The elf's crazy, but he's not so crazy not to know the spot he's in. He must want some kind of a deal."

Doc said, "What are the choices?"

"If I go in, I'm going to kill him before I do anything else. You understand that? Whisper goes down, and then we pick up whatever pieces are left." He turned to look at Doc. "You don't look like you like that."

"Okay, that's what happens if you go."

McCain said, "If he sees Stagger first, they'll probably witch it out. You know I'm not Touched, but I know you've gotta concentrate—and I know what I'd do if I had a hostage and I wanted to mess up somebody's concentration."

"Down to me, then." Doc opened the car door. McCain's hand clamped on his arm.

"Don't just walk out on me," he said. "Tell me to wait."

"Line—"

"Just say it."

"I'm going in first," Doc said carefully. "If the Fox doesn't walk out alive, then Whisper doesn't either. Right?"

"Yes, sir." McCain reached down, held out one of his automatics, grip first. "Katie said you did some shooting."

Doc picked up his black bag. "I'll play these."

McCain put the gun away. "You're gonna need more than luck," he said, his voice tight, "but luck anyway."

Doc went through the doorway. The source of the light was a stairway, maybe a hundred feet straight ahead through a glass-and-metal corridor; the stairs curved to the left and down, out of sight.

There was no place else to go.

The stairs ended in a tunnel, less than twenty feet wide, with an arched ceiling. McCain had explained that it was an old freight railroad, built forty feet under the streets to make downtown deliveries. Doc could see grooves on the puddled floor, and streaks of rusty rail. The light came from naked, dim bulbs dangling at twenty-foot intervals along the top of the arch. Cracks in the walls had grown spectacular icicles that twinkled in Doc's flashlight beam as he passed.

The tunnel curved around to the right. Reddish light shone on the wet floor, from somewhere still out of view. Doc got as close to the wall as he could and went on.

The red light came from a side door, framed in old brick. A derelict office desk and a couple of broken crates were to one side. Just beyond the door, the tunnel was blocked by a wooden wall— made of odd pieces of lumber nailed together, but not just piled debris: deliberately made and solid-looking.

The red light shifted, moved from side to side. Doc went to the door.

He was looking down a hallway some twenty feet long. At the far end was the shifting red light.

Hell again after all, Doc thought.

Doc waited a moment. His chest hurt. The tension, the damp and the cold, and the unsteady light were starting to make him sick, and if he waited any longer they surely would. He went down the hall.

A red bulb swung from a cord, throwing shadows back and forth. It did not seem to be an electric bulb, or an oil lamp, just a glass ball full of bloody light.

Kitsune stood just behind the light, her feet on a wooden stool, her arms outstretched. Her hair was brushed down straight, her head at a slight angle. She was wrapped in strips of gauze, spotted with what looked like bloodstains. As the light moved, it flashed on brass wires that came down from darkness overhead. They were twisted into loops around her neck and wrists.

There was a loud heavy flapping, and Whisper Who Dares appeared from the darkness. Instead of the Trueblood-sorcerer bones and charms Doc had seen in the ruined mall, he wore a rather plain black double-breasted suit, dark against darkness so that his face and hands seemed to float. His shining eyes were narrowed, and his face was shadowed below the winglike cheekbones. There was a single heavy silver ring, with a dull black stone, on his right hand.

"Put down your tools and conjures," he said. "Mischiefs abound in the levers of man."

Doc set his bag on the floor.

"You," Whisper said softly, "you are the one who carried death to the gates. And beat upon them. And now you come here, alone. Are you so terrible, then, in your courage? Or so steadfast in your vengeance?"

"All I want is her," Doc said. "After that—"

"You want her?" Whisper laughed, a bubbling hysteria that might have been funny in any kind of decent world. "Was the other a disappointment?"

"After that I don't care about you."

Whisper paused. His face twisted into a marble gargoyle's.

"This is no way to bargain! This of the pair is a trader, and the other goes for a price: what will either of them say to you, if you buy at the first offering?" He reached over to Kitsune. His foot bumped the stool, which wobbled. "Ah, cares, cares. Mortals are blind to beauty, but you appreciate the throat. So delicate, so vulnerable, so tight with wind and blood and nerve. Now. Here." He stood behind her, put his hands on her waist, slid them up to her breasts. "Oh, that's good," he said, and Kitsune's mouth mimed the words. He shook her. She groaned. "Yes, Whisper, again, please."

"Stop it!"

Whisper peeked from around the Fox's body. "Why? She can't stop you. "

Doc thought furiously. There was no useful threat here. Whisper certainly had no shame or guilt to play on. If McCain was right, there was a bargain still to be struck; but there was nothing to bargain with.

There was only nothing.

Doc said, "Because I'm not interested."

"In what? This body? No?" Whisper took a step aside, arm out, showing the woman off like a car salesman praising a $200 beater. "Not even in two such compact and elegant bodies? Joined to do whatever—"

"In you." Doc climbed up on the stool, stepping carefully around Kitsune's bare feet, and reached to the wire around her throat. "I'm taking her and going away. After that you can go play with yourself."

"What?"

Doc looked at Whisper. From the stool, he looked slightly down into the Ellyll's shiny eyes, which were quite wide now. He supposed they were reading everything he'd ever thought about a woman. And he found he didn't care. Cloudhunter was beyond all hurt. Kitsune was alive, with another life hanging on hers. Whisper Who Dares—

Whisper was his.

"I said you can go shit your little elfin pants."

Whisper snarled and kicked the stool away

Doc got his hand inside the brass noose with nothing to spare; it scraped his knuckles and cinched into the back of his hand.

At home, a farmer's wife had hung herself in the barn with fence wire. The stuff hadn't bothered to strangle her; it didn't stop until it hung up on her vertebrae. This stuff was thicker, but it would still be ugly fast if Doc lost his grip.

He clenched his teeth and pulled. Kitsune moaned, opened her eyes, looking straight into Doc's. "Hang on," he said.

Kitsune's arms pulled at the wires holding them, making a little slack in the strangling loop.

"Now you act like yourself, mortal! Dancing on air." Whisper applauded and stamped time.

Doc felt his heart twist, then pulled his brain back into Trauma Mode. He got both hands inside the loop—he was actually dangling from it, and his weight helped pull it wide. Kitsune pulled her head down, and Doc eased the noose over her head.

He let the wire slip away. His feet hit the floor, and his fingers started burning. He reached up to work at the wire binding Kitsune's right wrist.

Whisper leaned against the wall. "Not a bad show of faith, for a mortal," he said. "But somehow I don't feel my flesh burning at the touch of the Nazarite Christ."

"Didn't see any point in bothering him," Doc said, and freed Kitsune's other hand. She sagged against him. "Can you walk?"

"I'll try."

"Touching," Whisper said, and moved to block the doorway. "Moving, is that not what the mortals say, who have nowhere to go? I shall give her two thin knives, and let her dance on you: her sister will echo it to all your companions." He gave a wet giggle. "You'll like it."

It washed over Doc. He had a vision, now, of what he was: there was plenty of darkness in it, but there was none of this. He said in Ellytha, "There is something in our way. Remove it."

"What, all rage gone?" Whisper said. "Have you forgotten that I killed Cloudhunter Who Keeps His Sisters' Counsel?" He stepped aside. "Or perhaps the thought of the mortal whore in his arms has supplanted all memories of a dead Ellyll."

Doc felt the anger rise again. Kitsune squeezed his hand hard.

Doc said, "You did not kill him. He accepted his destiny beyond the gates. You were only able to strike a blow because he had

ceased to notice a coward. I am taking what I came for, and in return you may continue to be afraid."

Whisper was entirely still physically, but he wavered, as with rising heat. Doc made the effort to look away from him, and led the Fox down the corridor, into the icy tunnel.

A few steps past the door, Kitsune's breathing went ragged, and she leaned against some of the ruined furniture. Doc held her upright. "I'll be all right in a moment," she said.

From the inner chamber, there was a hideous, trembling howl, and the slam of boots. Whisper emerged, walking heavily, a knife in his fist.

"Look at my reflection, coward," Doc said, pointing at the wet floor, hoping this was a live card. "See what Glassisle saw."

Whisper Who Dares froze, his arm raised. There was a green flicker in his silver eyes. The knife dropped from his fingers; he clutched at his ring as if it burned him, and he backed against the wooden wall that blocked the tunnel.