Vengeance (22 page)

When they arrived, Marta left them to tend Gramma and sat, looking at Karen as if she was a poisonous snake. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn't kill you,” she said but removed the dart.

"Had no choice,” Karen moaned. “Michael.” She coughed until she retched. When she finished coughing, she told Marta the whole story.

"May's not dead yet,” Marta answered grimly. “No thanks to you. Can you prove what you claim?"

"Pump me full of drugs. Do whatever you want,” Karen said miserably. It seemed to her that everyone she came into contact with, she contaminated.

They held Karen while darkness fell. On instruction, she dictated her story into her wrisp.

A man entered and spoke quietly to Marta.

"Come on,” she said.

An ashen-faced May was propped up in bed in another room. When Karen approached, her eyes snapped open.

"She claims it was duress,” Marta said.

May nodded. “Had to be.” Her voice was the rustle of leaves. “If they'd waited, another six weeks would have saved them the trouble."

Karen stared in disbelief.

"It's nearly time, Karen. They can't do anything for me. The cancer's too advanced."

"Could they have treated it?” Karen's voice was thick. To have her survive yet still to die was almost too much to comprehend.

May shook her head. “Maybe if they'd caught it at the start. But we don't have the facilities here. And I couldn't surrender. There'd have been a show trial.” She paused for breath, and Karen thought of her entering that room the last time, propped up on her stick, refusing to bow to the inevitable.
She wouldn't have shown weakness to me, any more than anyone else. Oh, Gramma
, she thought, bereft of words.

"Don't grieve for me,” May spoke at last, her voice fading, then getting stronger again. “Will you help me? Not because of this, not from guilt, but rather for all the good times we had?"

"Of course,” Karen's voice shook.

"If I'm to die, I want my death to have meaning,” Gramma whispered, but still the fire was there. “And I want it to hurt them, not help them. I want it to paint them so dark that they'll become pariahs. I want it to be a rallying call to our cause.” She stopped, exhausted. Karen feared she wouldn't last the night.

Cold purpose flooded through Karen. She was far past simple fury at Michael. It extended to the whole human race. “Whatever you want, I'll do it.” She kissed Gramma on the cheek and thought of Sergei.

Gramma must have caught some doubt in her voice. “Don't promise because of today,” she said. “We'll be no better than anyone else who commits atrocities. But at least this one will have some meaning. If you're prepared to give everything, we need martyrs."

Gramma summoned a doctor, who injected Karen. “It'll show up as adrenaline, even if the scanners pick it up. Perfectly natural in the circumstances and perfectly harmless, too. Until...” He handed Karen a packet of what looked like morning-after pills. “This one,” he said. “Take it when we instruct you. We'll need to know your
exact
weight."

"The Heteros aren't the only ones with sympathisers,” Marta said. “Or access to black technology."

"Just wait for the nod.” May kissed Karen goodbye.

The spellhound felt the almost imperceptible pressure of the light as the laser brushed it. It had been distracted, had almost caught the woman who stank of magic before she ducked into the tunnel. Not for the first time the spellhound almost ground its teeth in frustration. And in the moment when it fantasised about wrapping its paws around the mage's throat, it felt the gentle touch of impending death.

It moved fast enough that the shot missed its head, but the sniper's shot struck its shoulder a hammer blow. It rolled sideways in the road to present a moving target while keeping as low as possible. Only when it reached the cover of a burnt-out car did it regain its feet.

Away from the tunnel appeared to be the safest option, retracing the woman's steps. It needed help. Blood was coursing down its arm in a steady flow, and it needed a tourniquet. If it could staunch the bleeding, it would recover faster than a human could. Though moving the shoulder freely might take longer.

Once it recovered it could resume the hunt. It had felt a burst of activity in the area and if necessary, would resume quartering the city, street by street, house by house, limbo dancing between the lines, though this time it could be the eternal limbo of death. It was worried that what it had felt was the Spell of Silent Death, the only spell it feared. That not even the midgies could protect it against. Especially if it was being fuelled by other spells.

Instinct took it back to where the woman had come from. It climbed the steps up to a house, feeling watched from within. It hammered on the door until it was opened. A woman's voice said ‘What the...?” but the spellhound pushed past her.

Pictograms danced between them:—Please help me. I have been wounded. I am no threat. Please help me.—It was unsure whether the woman understood.

She took away a hand sticky with blood and stifled an exclamation. The spellhound toppled forward and the woman half-caught it. She was strong and powerful, and helped it along the hallway.

"What's happening down there, Marta?” A man's voice drifted down the stairs. The spellhound's hackles rose. It could smell magic and death.

"There's something here. I don't know what it is,” Marta called. “It must be an alien. Whatever it is, it's hurt."

"Bring it up,” the man called. “I'll take a look at it."

"Doctor Kallis will look at your wounds,” Marta said.

The spellhound couldn't believe its luck. It was being led toward the traces of the spells. Marta helped it up the stairs and into a room where an old woman sat propped up in bed, watching them intently. Her throat was wrapped in bandages, and the sheets were stained with blood.

The spellhound sniffed magic and whined; the spell had been here but was gone. The other woman must have taken it.

"You poor thing,” the woman gasped, so quietly she was barely audible, clearly thinking it whined in pain. It licked her hand, and she stroked its head.

Doctor Kallis examined it. “The bullet's gone clean through. Lucky it wasn't an explosive one, else it might have smashed the shoulder completely. I've no idea how soon it'll heal—I've never seen anything like it."

As Kallis dressed the wound, the spellhound relaxed. The woman had had the spell, but it wouldn't exact vengeance on her. Time would do that. She had only weeks left to live before the disease did the spellhound's job for it.

The bargain O'Malley had struck with the woman was a poor one by his previous standards, but the Spell of Silent Death and the inferior copies of his spells bought him safe passage, food, and precious information, enough to decide he couldn't stay any longer. It also bought him an introduction to a ‘safe’ shelter, full of the displaced who were neutral or sympathetic to Parti Homo. The shelter was little more than a collection of boxes, a bonfire, and handouts from the peacekeeping forces.

Tonight was bitter, even by local standards. They gathered round the makeshift bonfire for warmth, stamping their feet, blowing on their hands. The wind blew their breath to shreds and tossed sparks from the fire into the air. It made the night even colder. O'Malley and the others around the fire hopped from foot to foot, for if they stood on the ground too long, they soon lost sensation in their feet. When they retreated to their cardboard beds, the chances were good that at least one sleeper wouldn't awake in the morning but instead would greet eternity frozen stiff. He could well be one of them. Whether his healing spells had ceased to work in the primitive conditions or were overwhelmed by the cold, his arthritis made it difficult to move his hands, and he longed to be somewhere warm. Somewhere where he didn't flinch every time he heard a firework.

The air reeked with the tang of wood smoke and cheap sausages. O'Malley couldn't get used to how plentiful meat was, and he still salivated at the mere thought of it, although the sausages were mostly fat and sawdust, viewed with contempt by most of his fellow diners. “The Krauts won't hand out decent food as freebies,” one old man grumbled. “Just the shite they can't sell.” He accepted the flask being passed around and took a swig, the liquor burning his throat. “Thanks,” he gasped.

"No problem,” the woman who had passed it to him said.

"It was better when I was a kid,” a man grumbled.

"Yeah, yeah,” the woman mocked, her twang broadening. She shrugged, “It was always warmer when you were young, wasn't it, Wally? And the beer was nicer and the chicas better looking."

"D'you hear some big cat's got out of the zoo?” a scarred man, the next in line, said as he accepted the flask. It was as if conversation was the price of the drink.

"What you on about, man?” a younger one called. “All the zoo animals been dead for years. Everyone knows that."

"I tell you, they've seen some big black animal skulking round,” Scar insisted.

O'Malley noticed Wally's eyes glistening. “You all right?” he asked the old man, who shrugged.

"Just thinking about when I were a kid.” Wally sighed. “It was better then, no matter what they say. People didn't kill each other just for disagreeing with ‘em. Still,” he added, “you can't go back, can you?"

"No, I suppose not,” O'Malley agreed. “But what if you could? What if you could go back?"

"Oh, I'd give anything to see those old days again,” Wally said. They jumped at a bang, and both grinned nervously. There was another bang, and Scar's chest erupted in a spray of crimson and coloured clothing, and the others scattered. Wally grabbed O'Malley's arm. “Heteros!” he shouted. “Get down!"

Karen sat with a glass of water, sipping occasionally, just beginning to lose her composure. She dabbed her eyes and surreptitiously swallowed the tablet as instructed.

In the next room, at times perfectly calibrated to their body mass, fifty other people swallowed tablets with their water.

The spellhound sat watching the woman. It couldn't explain why it had spared her life. The woman was dying anyway. She had only weeks to live, months at most. But that was only a half-truth. In some dark corner of its being, the spellhound had to admire the sheer bloody-mindedness of her, prepared to look death in the face and use it.

She was dead, anyway, as far as Duff was concerned. Long dead and gone to dust; if not by the spellhound's paw, Duff wasn't to know that. It would edit that incident. Besides, she was only a red herring. The real villain was out there somewhere.

As if on cue, the spellhound felt a spell sing its siren song. The Spell of Yesterday was close, very close.
Again
? It thought. O'Malley was fleeing even further back.

There was no time to waste—it could feel the spell building, just as it had in Meroë. There was something wrong, something not quite right about the field, but it wasn't close enough to tell what. It passed a pool of stagnant water and plunged its head in, gulping as much as it could, intent that it wouldn't get dehydrated again. Second skin covering its eyes, ears, and nose, stopping it from pinning down that anomaly, and too soon—much too soon—it felt, rather than heard the mage disappear, plunging further back into savagery.

Karen lurched from Gramma's house to the near end of the tunnels without incident; the guards were unhappy when she turned up unescorted, but she bluffed her way through them, into the tunnels. Michael's crude conditioning had burnt through, and now she had no refuge from the consequences of her actions.

At the other end, Michael waited for her with a trio of armed thugs. They wore no uniform, but they didn't need to. It was clear they were Hetero partisans.

They ‘escorted’ her to their headquarters and threw her into a dirty, stinking cell lit only by a bare bulb. From the marks on the walls she guessed that few of her predecessors had left intact. She didn't care. Michael had already violated her as thoroughly as if he'd raped her. She lay curled foetally in the corner, haunted by flashbacks.

Michael had turned her into a lethal weapon, immobilising and injecting her with a microt that had attached itself to her brainstem, waiting until needed. To prevent Karen warning Gramma, he overwrote the memory engrams, implanting false memories of a harmless lunchtime spent with him.

It was backstreet garage stuff but no less effective for that. What shocked Karen more than his assault had been the hatred that gushed like an oil strike when he showed her the results of his moonlighting.

"Fucking queer whore,” he'd hissed. “Linda told me about you and her all them years ago. She thought it was funny, said you were the only one she'd ever been with. But you worked your way through them, didn't you? I put up with you for her sake, but I don't have to do that now. Did Sergei know?” His eyes gleamed. “He does now. You and your fucking bitch grandmother. Witches.” He wiped his mouth. “Now the Witchfinder-General's here to burn the whole lot of youse at the stake.” He held the nanot in his palm. “And you know what, Karen? You're the kindling that'll burn them, and this here's the motch."

It was added torture, replaying it over and over again. Karen had grieved for Linda, but now there was the guilt as well—maybe she'd caused all this?

Days later her captors released Karen without explanation. She expected a bullet in the back of the head, but instead they blindfolded and dumped her on a patch of waste ground in the Spanish Sector. The Spanish troops picked her up and drove her to the council house, ushering her into an office where three people sat. The first was Peter Alberts, a Government whip. Also present was Catherine Moorhouse, the council leader. The third man was never identified but was clearly Secret Service.

Alberts was as smooth as silk, but Karen didn't trust him. Based on gut feelings and recent experiences, at the moment she felt the only good man was a dead one. Moorhouse eyed Karen warily, unsure of the loose cannon she'd suddenly become.