The Serpent Mage (13 page)

"There's a special study crew from the UCLA music library going through all his papers now."

Moffat released Michaels shoulder and patted it gently. "I will await further instructions, then. Honestly, I should have the recording wrapped up in three weeks. I can start rehearsal after I get back from Pinewood. Shall we aim for something in a month and a half?"

"Not unreasonable," Kristine said.

"Good. Now go away, and let me harass my sessions people. Michael." He held out his hand, and Michael shook it firmly. "Far be it from me to nudge, but this woman…" He indicated Kristine with a nod and a wink. "She's something quite special. You could do much, much worse."

"Edgar…" Kristine warned, lifting a fist.

"Out! Work to do." Moffat opened the door and showed them back through the recording room to the hallway, then shut the door abruptly. The red light came on.

Kristine and Michael regarded each other in the hallway for a moment. "All right," Kristine said. "Now you've met him. I think he's essential. Don't you?"

"Yes," Michael said. "Especially since I don't believe Arno left many instruction's or very many clues. I've looked through a lot of papers and letters in the past few weeks. The manuscript is all I've found."

"Can't hurt to look again, though," Kristine said. "Now. If you'll drop me off at the campus…" She marched down the hall ahead of him, turned and cocked her head. Michael remained by the door smiling at her.

"Coming?"

He caught up, and they left the building. "Moffat's a touch pushy, isn't he?"

"More than a touch," Kristine said. "He only met Tommy once, for just a few minutes, and — Well. Not worth talking about."

"We haven't had lunch in a long time," Michael said hesitantly.

"No time, not today," Kristine answered crisply. He did not persist. Even without a probe, he could sense her uncertainty and pain. She glanced at him as they climbed into her car. "Patience, Michael. Please."

He agreed with a nod and put the car in gear.

Michael watched as a librarian and a team of students hauled the last papers from the garage into a campus van. The attic was empty; the music room had been processed the week before, leaving little more than the furniture. Now, with the removal of the last of the material from the garage, the house seemed less protective and himself more vulnerable, but vulnerable to what he couldn't say. Clarkham's inroads, perhaps.

But Michael couldn't believe Clarkham was the greatest of his problems.

I am dark! Awaiting sight Formless wave Guiding light

Again his poems were short and enigmatic, as they had been in the Realm, but they offered no answers to his questions; there was no Death's Radio infusing his art.

He was on his own, whatever he had to face.

The van drove away, and Michael shut the garage door on the aisles of empty metal shelves and the old Packard. He paused at the latch and lock, frowning.

Confusion. Carpets of dirty car parts arrayed in dark halls. And over all — a nasty, sickening foulness of the mind.

"That's a beautiful old car."

Michael turned and saw Tommy at the end of the drive. "Isn't it?" he said. "Pity it's too expensive to drive."

Tommy shrugged that off. "Belonged to your friend, didn't it? Waltiri?"

Michael nodded. "What can I do for you?"

"Leave her alone."

"Kristine? I haven't heard from her in two days." He swallowed. "Besides, she left you weeks ago."

"Just two days. Great. You're right. She left me weeks ago. I'm partly to blame. You're the main reason, though."

There was a repulsive foulness in the man's aura that Michael found all too familiar. He began walking down the brick drive toward Tommy, acting on instinct again. The situation felt dangerous.

"You know a fellow named Clarkham?" Tommy asked, backing up a step and then standing his ground as Michael approached.

"Yes."

"He knows you. He's been watching you and Kristine. He told me all about you. How you badmouth me. A poet." Tommy laughed as if he had just seen a pratfall on TV. "Jesus, a poet! You look like a God damned athlete, not a poet."

"Looks deceive," Michael said, sensing that Tommy had a gun, knowing it was behind the jacket, held by the left hand stuck through a hole cut in the fabric of the side pocket. The jacket could open, and he could fire in an instant. Michael was five yards from the gun.

"He said you're as bad for her as I was. You hit her more than I did. He says you take her to…" His free hand swung back and forth, and he nodded his head deeply, twice. "Parties. Get her in that scene. Do lines of coke. Shit, I would never get her involved in that." The hand stopped swinging. "Hollywood shit."

Whatever native intelligence Tommy had once possessed had been corroded by Clarkham's discharge of foulness. Michael could feel the Isomage near, if not in space then in influence, watching through this pitiful and extremely dangerous intermediary.

"He's a liar," Michael said. "You don't want to believe him."

"No, I don't, really," Tommy said. "I didn't know she was like that. I was bad enough for her. I just loved her too much, and I'd get jealous, you know?"

Soon; it would be very soon. Two and a half strides. He could judge the size of the gun. It was a .45 automatic, and it was loaded with hollow-core bullets. It could cut him in half. Clarkham had sent him a missile loaded with death, much as the Sidhe had sent Michael to Clarkham.

It would be useless trying to stop Tommy. If Michael cast a decoy shadow, to give himself time to find shelter, it was entirely possible that Clarkham would have prepared the man for such an eventuality, even equipped him with a means to see through the deception. Michael's thoughts were sharp as razors, cutting quickly at this hypothesis, then at that.

He felt Robert Dopso nearby — a definite complication if Dopso or his mother came out of the house now. Michael's senses rose to a higher level of acuity.

"It's not that I hate you," Tommy said, smiling, the arm in the jacket pocket twitching. "You're just like any other son-of-a-bitch. Her body." Pain crossed Tommy's face. "That's all you care about. Me, I really
cared
. I wanted her to be everything she could be." His voice was hoarse. He was shaking.

"We're friends, that's all," Michael said calmly. "No need to be upset."

"My needs and your needs aren't the point, are they?" Tommy said. "Don't come any closer. He warned me, but he didn't need to warn me, did he? I remember." He touched his nose.

"Clarkham is a liar," Michael reiterated. "He rilled you full of bad things… didn't he?"

A light of recognition appeared in Tommy's eyes. "He touched me when we were talking."

Something built rapidly in Michael, a shadow different from the ones he had cast before, different even from the one he had finally sent spinning to trap Clarkham in Xanadu. This was a variety of shadow he had not been told about, and finding it within him frightened him almost as much as Tommy did. He tried to hold it back but could not; his augmented instinct told him there was no other way.

But Michael did not want to believe that. He did not want to believe he was capable of defending himself in such a way.

The part that thinks death is sleep. Lose that part. The part that seeks warm darkness and oblivion. Lose that self
. He
will embrace it. He desires rest and escape from the pain
.

The voice telling Michael these things was his own.

Dopso walked down the sidewalk before the driveway, saw Tommy and Michael and smiled at Michael. "Hello," he said. Then he frowned. "What's—"

"No!" Michael said. "Go back!" Whatever choice he had had was now taken from him. Tommy would kill Dopso and anybody else who walked by. Clarkham's missile was not precise, could not control itself, could not discriminate.

Across the street, a middle-aged woman in a pink dress sauntered by, taking her schnauzer for a walk.

Tommy jerked the jacket open, revealing the dull gray gun.

Michael sent. The shadow that went forth was not even visible. It did not mimic Michael's form. It simply carried another self away, a self he did not need and could use to advantage.

Dopso and the middle-aged woman saw Tommy lift the gun, turn halfway, twitch and apply the gun to his own head. There was a sleepy look on his face; this would have happened anyway, but nevertheless —

Michael screamed inside.

The gun went off.

Tommy's hair lifted obscenely on the opposite side of his head, and he dropped as if kicked by a bull. Michael closed his eyes and heard the dog barking and the woman shrieking. He opened his eyes and saw the dog dragging the woman back and forth in a space of a few yards. Dopso had turned away, arms held up against the sound of the shot. Splashes of blood covered the sidewalk and grass by his feet.

Even knowing there had been no other choice, Michael felt sick. He forced himself to look at the body. Clarkham's deposited foulness had eaten away the dead Tommy almost instantly. What was left was not recognizable. It was covered with a shining blackness and had slumped inward, wicked witch style, only the gun unaffected. In seconds, there was little more than a pile of tattered clothing and evil-smelling dust.

The woman had stopped shrieking. The dog sat on the sidewalk, tongue hanging. "Are you all right?" she called out to Michael, her voice hoarse. Michael was too stunned to answer.

"God," Dopso said, eyes wide, staring at the dust.

"What happened to him?" the woman asked sharply, her voice on the edge of a scream again.

"He's dead," Michael said. "I'll call the police."

"He shot himself," Dopso said. "But he's…"

Michael nodded and looked at the ridge of the roof on the house directly opposite. A large crow-like bird with a red breast perched there.

The woman crossed the street, dragging the dog on its leash behind her back, her eyes glazed with anticipation of disgust. She stepped up on the curb, staring fixedly at the pile of debris. "He's not there," she said, amazed. "What happened to his body?"

"Please go home," Michael said. Gently, he gave her a forgetfulness, this time hardly even aware he was exercising an ability for the first time. Absentmindedly, he extended the forgetfulness to the dog. The woman wandered off, silent and calm.

The bird on the roof had flown away.

He did not want Dopso to forget. He was close enough to the action to need to remember and understand.

"Michael…"

"Do you want to know what happened?" Michael asked.

"I don't think so," Dopso replied, his voice fading. He shook his head.

"You'll have to know sooner or later."

"But not now___Where did he go?"

"He was sent here by David Clarkham."

"Yes…?"

Michael could tell now was not the time to reveal all to Dopso.

"I'm going to call the police," Michael said.

He entered the house and walked into the kitchen, slumping into a chair. He picked up the phone receiver and dialed the number Lieutenant Harvey had given him. Harvey's assistant, a young-sounding man, answered. Michael gave him few details, just saying that the lieutenant should call him immediately.

"I'll tell him when he comes in," the assistant said dubiously.

Michael hung up and returned to the clothes and the gun. No other people had stepped out of their homes to investigate. Dopso had gone back into his house. Michael could feel him sitting in a chair inside, ignoring his mother's questions.

The woman and her dog had walked out of sight. Everything was quiet again.

The clothes themselves had disintegrated. The gun's grip had turned rusty brown and ash-gray. Michael held the gun butt between two fingers and carried it into the house.

The wind was already blowing what was left of Tommy down the sidewalk, onto the grass and the bushes at the edge of the driveway.

Chapter Twelve

Contents
-
Prev
/
Next

"I think I'm more upset than you are," Michael said, sitting across from her in the cramped apartment. Rock-climbing tools hung on the small dining nook wall like pieces of art; knapsacks, tents and metal shelving covered with rocks filled the hall to the bathroom and bedroom. Kristine's living there seemed to have hardly made an impression. Aside from a three-tier fold-up bookcase beside the couch and a stack of blank ruled composition sheets, the roommate's presence dominated even in her absence.

Kristine did not speak for a long time. She took deep, even breaths, looking out past the hide-a-bed and through the sliding glass door at the courtyard beyond. "You're sure he died. He didn't just disappear."

"He died, and then he decayed," Michael said bluntly.

"I don't know why you should be upset," Kristine said, still not looking at him. "He threatened you, and you lived. You won. Poor bastard."

"He was used," Michael said for the third time.

"Did he feel what he was doing — did he know?"

"I think so," Michael said. "I can't be sure, though."

"This fantasy of yours is real ugly, you know that?"

Michael didn't understand,

"This macho fantasy world. Men do so like to kill each other." Her soft voice dripped venom. "I
do
care. I loved him. I said I didn't, but… I didn't need you to protect me from him. I don't care what I said."

"No. He didn't go to you after Clarkham—"

"Just shut up about Clarkham. About everything. Jesus, Michael, it's so convenient. He didn't even leave a body.

What did your police lieutenant think about that?"

"I haven't talked to him yet. It's only been two hours. He's supposed to call me back."

"Trying to be legal and above suspicion. Good move." She had not cried at all, but her eyes appeared puffy. "I'm not excited now about the strangeness. I was. It seemed fantastic, people disappearing, fairies coming back to Earth, old sorcerers battling it out with music. Now it just seems like maybe the Middle East. Terrorists. Murder. No different."

"It's not a fantasy," Michael said. "It's deadly serious. Nobody escapes for long." His last four words sounded ominous even to himself. Kristine looked at him directly for the first time since he had told her what happened. She squinted.

"Are lots more people going to die?"

"1 don't know."

"You're talking about a war, aren't you?"

Michael shook his head.

"But you didn't really kill… Tommy."

"I made him kill himself. That's close enough."

"You didn't murder him because he would have killed you. Self-defense isn't murder. Clarkham filled Tommy with lies. That means
he
killed Tommy. What do you think about that? Don't you
hate
Clarkham now?"

Michael considered for a moment, then shook his head. "Does me no good to hate him, or anyone."

"But you'll kill him if you get the chance?"

Michael considered some more, then said, "I'll kill him."

Suddenly, everything about Kristine seemed to soften and relax. She closed her eyes and drew in a shuddering breath, letting it out with a moan. "I cut him out of my life weeks ago. Isn't that strange? When you build up a dependence on people, knowing you can't possibly ever see them again — because they're dead — that's like having it shoved in your face. It means you'll die too. Am I making any sense?"

Michael nodded. Alyons, Lin Piao Tai, Clarkham, and now Tommy. Directly or indirectly, three deaths and one failed attempt. That wasn't what Kristine meant, but the sensation was the same — he felt his own mortality acutely.

"I'm supposed to be on campus at two," Kristine said. "I'll wash my face." She stood.

"Kristine, if I could have done it any other way, I would have."

"I don't blame you, Michael," she said, two steps from the table.

Michael stared at her until she turned away.

"There should be something more between us. Don't you feel it?" he asked.

"Yes."

"And it's just not working out."

"That's putting it mildly."

"I'll go, then."

"Not that I don't want it to work out," Kristine said. "But we're partners in something else, aren't we?" She primmed her lips in a defiant, hard line.

"Yes?"

"We're partners in the concerto. Clarkham doesn't want it performed. That's enough to convince me. And you?"

"Yes," Michael said. "That's enough."

"Then let's move on with that and let the other stuff work itself out in due course."

"Okay."

"Let me know what the lieutenant has to say. And I'll let you know what Moffat thinks about the new orchestration."

They parted outside the apartment's main gate, and Michael returned to the Saab. He sat in the car with his hands on the wheel, certain about nothing and guilty because he was hurting, not for being a murderer, but simply because he was no longer in Kristine's presence.

In truth, everything had been so much easier in the Realm, so much more clear-cut.

Harvey led Michael down the hallway, his scuffed brown Florsheims clacking, every sound both of them made seeming hollow as it echoed from the ranks of stainless steel doors. An assistant coroner in a pristine white lab smock followed a few steps behind.

The unofficially-named Noguchi wing of the Los Angeles County Morgue had been added three years before, after years of overcrowding, and was seldom filled to capacity. The last tagged stainless steel door was on a corner with an as-yet unfinished corridor stretching to the left for another dozen yards.

Harvey gestured at the door, and the assistant placed an electronic key against the code box. The door popped open with a slight hiss, and the chamber bed slid smoothly out. Within the translucent bag on the bed was a blue-green body at least six and a half feet long. The assistant unzipped the head of the bag and pulled the material wide for Michael to see. Other than Alyons, Michael had never seen a dead Sidhe before.

"Do you know what it is?" Harvey asked.

"It's an Arboral female, I think," Michael said.

"And what is an Arboral?"

"A Sidhe that lives in forests. Is a part of forests. Controls the wood." The Sidhe's face was composed, peaceful. Michael intuited a kind of postdeath discipline at work; the Sidhe had self-control even after life ended.

"Okay," Harvey said. "I've never seen a human being with skin that color. Even dead. Or with a face that long. Do you know her?"

"No," Michael said. "I never knew any Arborals." He had only seen Arborals twice, the first time when they had delivered the gift of wood to him near the Crane Women's hut in the Realm. That had been at night, and he had not seen them clearly. The second time had been in Inyas Trai, just a glimpse of them tending the Ban's library-forest.

"Now after this, I ask you, should I be surprised at what you've told me about this Tommy fellow?"

Michael could not turn away from the blue-green face. "I suppose not."

"Because I believe you." Harvey nodded to the assistant, and he zipped the bag up and sealed the chamber. "Thank you." The assistant walked back up the hallway without a single backward glance. "He may not look it, but he's spooked. Twelve years in this office, and he's spooked. Everything's changing now. We found this," he indicated the body, "in Griffith Park, not far from the observatory. It was backed up against a tree. Somebody had shot it. Her. Just once. This is the third unexplainable body found in Los Angeles in the last month.

"I'm going to ask you a question." Harvey stared up at the fluorescent fixtures on the ceiling. "What in hell are we supposed to do to prepare for this? Wetbacks from beyond. Jesus."

"I don't think you can prepare," Michael said.

"There are going to be more of them?"

"Yes."

"How many more, and where?"

"I don't know how many more, and I don't know exactly where they'll arrive."

"The Tippett Hotel?"

Michael nodded. "That's going to be a major gateway."

"And if I tell my department we have to surround the hotel — if they believe me and don't let me out on a stress-related discharge — will that do any good?"

"No," Michael said.

"They can be killed, though."

"Arborals, maybe even some Faer, but I don't think you could kill some of the other types that will be coming through. I wouldn't advise you to try."

"'Wouldn't advise me to try.' Jesus. Maybe I should just resign and take up throwing ashes over my head and wearing hair shirts?"

Michael smiled.

Harvey appeared disgusted."You're not doing me any good at all," he said. "And it wouldn't do either of us any good to have you arrested. There's a witness that Tommy committed suicide. This Dopso fellow. Whatever you say about self-defense, that's all that matters. I presume there's going to be a missing persons report. I'll try to take care of that. But what are
you
going to do?"

"Wait. Try to be patient. I'm not in control, Lieutenant."

"Is anybody?"

"Perhaps."

"Anybody human, I mean?"

Michael hesitated, then shook his head, no.