Wild Thing (36 page)

Her eyes shone.  'So they're hunting
me
now!  And I have to prove I'm better!'

'That's right.  You have to hide what you've done.  Pretend you don't know about it.  Get rid of any incriminating evidence.'

She looked puzzled.

'Like being covered in blood,' he pointed out.  Then added, 'or carrying a still-warm human heart.  You need to wash.  I think another visit to a pond is in order.'

She grinned.

'And tell me, where are your clothes?'

'I took them off while I stalked him.  They're not very far.  About half way.'

The heart, they buried.

Harmon's wish for no one to find them while she bathed and dressed appeared to have been granted.  He now sat on the edge of another park bench while Leeth dressed in the sun, shaking her head about and rubbing her fingers through her hair to try to finish drying it.

Just as he decided it was enough, that they could leave, she stopped and jogged over to him.

'Two people coming.  Big.'

Damn
, he thought. 
It might look suspicious if we hurry off.
  With an effort, he composed himself, waiting.

And waiting.  Still no one came.  Nor could he hear anyone, either.  He looked at her, doubtfully.

'Are you sure?'

'Yeah.  They'll be here real soon.'

'How-'  He stopped himself.  Now was not the time to investigate.

'Remember,' he Suggested, reiterating his advice, 'You're just Sara.  We're out in the park for some relaxation.  You know nothing about anything unusual happening.  You're a little worried by the scream.'

He was surprised by just how well, how thoroughly, the spell affected her.  In fact, he watched what transpired with something like shock.  Even her aura changed!  Noting her total unawareness of him, her inward focus, he quickly followed the first spell with a mindmeld.

Probing her mind, he saw what had happened, and gradually relaxed.  He had framed her Unfolding as a marking of her transition to adulthood.  For reasons that weren't clear to him, by giving her a new, adult name to signify that, it had changed her conception of herself in some fundamental way.  His Suggestion just now had interacted with that.  He watched as “Leeth” was packed away and “Sara” returned.

He felt a curious sense of loss; the return of the happy young child, Sara, made him realize
that
person was now lost to him.  Lost through his own actions; slipping through his fingers as irrevocably as if she had fallen from a cliff.

With a shock, it dawned on him that he was reacting like a father who had just realized his little girl had grown up.

Yet despite reasoning that out, it still hurt.

He felt he hardly knew this new young woman, his feral creation.  With
Sara
standing now beside him, he felt… at ease.  A certain
tension
had dissipated.

Just how much had she changed?  In her mind, he saw that Sara was still there: but Sara was a child.  The person hidden now, beneath,
was a woman.

He hoped-

Footsteps, trying to be silent, ended his introspection.  He looked speculatively at the innocent young girl, Sara, as two men entered the clearing.  Police.  One, built like a professional football player.  The other – built just plain
fat
.  He shifted his perception to the Imaginal plane.  Both men were tense, worried.  Alert.  Some dead sections in Footballer's aura, typical of cyber augmentation. As their eyes fell on Sara he saw the increase in interest signaled by their auras.  Then, with a mental start, he realized one of them was a mage.  The fat one.  Saw the shift in Imaginal pattern as the other realized that he himself was, too.  Saw the fat one murmur to the big one as they approached.

'He says you're a mage, Uncle,' Leeth – no, Sara – whispered to him. 
How did she-? Could she
hear
them?  How
on earth-?
  The two citycops spread out a little, the big one drawing his gun.  Harmon didn't have to fake anxiety as he spoke.

'Officers?  What's the matter?'  In inspiration, he put a worried expression on his face and looked around.  Then back at them.  'Are we in danger?  Is there some creature loose in the park?'

The fat man's eyes narrowed.  'Now, what makes you think
that
, sir?'

Sara spoke up.  'We heard a woman screaming.  Uncle cast a spell and could see her, off in the distance.  There was a man on the ground, near her.'

'A spell, sir?'

'A simple clairvoyance spell, officer.'

The man had a truth spell running, Harmon realized, with a sinking feeling.  At least, though, the faint trace of Suggestion he'd cast on Sara had been swallowed up inside her aura, as usual.  Odd, really, now he thought about it.  Could that signify the beginnings of some kind of resistance to it?  No, inconceivable at this point, considering how often he'd used it on her and the Repetition Effect.  Unless it was a consequence of her Unfolding?  Had the change in her aura-

'You're a mage then, sir?'

He brought his attention back to the serious matter at hand.  'Yes, officer.  Dr Harmon.'

'A doctor?  And you saw a man's body, but made no attempt to go to him and heal him?'

'My doctorate is in Psychology I'm afraid, officer.  I would have been of no use to the unfortunate fellow.'  Of course not – Leeth had taken his heart.  He couldn't have healed him if he'd
wanted
to.

'Do you know anything about the murder, doctor?' the man asked, straight out.

Harmon had hoped the fellow would rely on the truth spell.  He shrugged apologetically while mentally crossing his fingers.

'Again, I'm sorry.  I was asleep at the time.  I had dozed off in the sun.  My ward here dragged me all over the park this morning, and I was quite exhausted.'  Which was all, quite literally, true.

The officer looked at him a moment longer then turned to Sara.  Sized her up.  Harmon could almost hear him thinking, “No, no way this little chick could have done
that.
”  The Sara persona, Harmon was pleased to note with a quick Imaginal scan, was well to the fore.

'And you, girl – ?'

'Sara, sir.'

'- Sara: do
you
know anything about this murder?'

Harmon suppressed an exhalation of relief. 
S
ara knew nothing.  Leeth, on the other hand….

'No, sir.'

The mage-cop nodded.  Just then his commlink buzzed, and he stepped away to take the call while his bigger and taller partner noted their Citizen IDs.  Until then the fellow hadn't spoken a word, but the alertness in his eyes, the grimly-locked jaw, and his slightly-narrowed eyes whenever he looked at “Sara” made Harmon suspect this one was the more dangerous of the two.

'You're fukken jokin’? 
Another
one?'  The fat mage listened a little longer, before turning back to them.  He and his partner exchanged a look.

'You got their details?'

A nod, a few more hurried questions, a final warning they might be called on to give evidence, then they were off.

Harmon watched them go, letting out a heartfelt sigh of relief once they were out of sight.

'What did they mean, “another one,” Leeth?'

She looked at him, confused.  'Leeth?  That- that's me, isn't it?'

His own experience certainly confirmed the Repetition Effect.  The more often you successfully cast a spell on the same person, the easier it became; a fresh reason for the popular fear and distrust of mages.  He casually removed the Suggestion, and she blinked and shook herself.  He had to repeat the question.

She shrugged.  'They just found another body in the park.'

He winced.  'Leeth, did you…?'

'No, I came straight back to you after my hunt.'  Suddenly her eyes widened in dismay.  'Was I supposed to kill more than one, Keepie?'

He closed his eyes in relief, though a shiver ran through him at her question.  'No, Leeth, one was more than I expected.'

She grinned and took his hand.  'What'll we do now?'

He gently disengaged.  'I think it is time we returned home.'

'Oh, no!  Can't we just-'

Harmon guided her firmly, still arguing, toward the nearest exit.

-

Marc Disten did not arrive for over five minutes, then simply stood, head sweeping smoothly across the empty scene and then back again.  She was heading swiftly north.  So swiftly, she had to be in a vehicle.  Unfortunately, her exit point was a considerable distance from the place where the Ferrari was parked. Even at a run, it would give her something like a ten minute head start.  It was good that the sense of her location seemed little affected by distance.  She would be found, no matter how fast she fled.

But cruising through the Sonoma Valley thirty three minutes later, the connection abruptly died. Disten pulled the battered Quattropotenza off onto the shoulder of the highway.  Inside, expressionless, the large man sat thinking.

The abrupt cessation of the Call reinforced the new idea, that a magical effect was involved.  If so, what had interfered?  Living earth blocked magic: the world's stock exchanges were now kept underground, to prevent magical attacks that would halt trading.  An underground dwelling, then?  Or some other form of barrier?

Disten considered.  In hindsight, spending the minutes it had required to try to Perfect the boy had been an error of judgment.  That effort had failed and little had been learned.

She was very near now, though.  There would be further opportunities.  Time was irrelevant.
 

Chapter 41 

Later that afternoon in the park, Detective Adam Garland stood to one side, giving his overweight partner space as they watched the specialist manifest the spirit of the Parklands.  Garland noted Berlusconi's heavy jowls twist in distaste as the other practitioner got to work.  He knew his partner distrusted shamans and their “altered states of consciousness”; considered it a mere excuse to drug up and space out with magic.

Garland had had to break himself of the habit of referring to them all as mages, discovering it was the quickest way to send Berlusconi into a spitting rant. “Mages work from theory.  We construct consistent, reproducible spells. Not fukken hit-or-miss
artworks!”
  Even now, Berlusconi's expression soured at the other practitioner's success as soil, grass, leaves and bark snaked together, weaving a framework for the patchwork thing that suddenly shivered with life.

But as it finished coalescing into visible sight, its inhuman shape made Garland's heart sink.  Looked like the shaman's guess would be right.

Still, he had to try.  He stepped forward as the city shaman turned to him and nodded.  'It's ready.  It'll hear you, and answer you.  But try to keep it simple okay?'

Garland nodded, turning his attention to the disturbingly-mobile form of the plant-thing swaying patiently before him.  'Did you sense a murder this afternoon?'

The thing shifted confusedly.  The shaman spoke, at the same time offering his thoughts to the spirit for inspection.  'A killing of a human.'

The disturbed motions settled.  'A human died.'

'Yes.  A healthy man, jogging on the path that loops behind the picnic area.'

Its form twisted and shifted further.  'A human died, under today's sun.  Under the shade of the oak…' the speech rustled out in words that faded into a dance of sweeping branches, somehow suggesting a sad struggle.  Then it fell almost motionless, and he had the impression it could sense his effort to interpret its motions.  It spoke again.  'The oak of lightnings.'

'Ah.  Thank you, I'll confirm that later.'  Yes, that sounded like the first murder site.  'Can you describe the killer?'

A long period of confused rustling followed.  'A human,' it offered, at last.  'Very.'

Very?
  What did that mean?  He left that, for now.

'A man or a woman?  Male, or female?'

It shifted uncomfortably.  'It carried no small humans.'

'Young, old?'

'Very new.'

He frowned.  'A child, you mean?'

Again, it shifted.  'Fresh.  New.'

Garland sighed.  This was getting them nowhere.  But he persisted.  'What did you mean, “very”?  A normal human?'

'Very human.  Healthy.'

Shit.  So they were looking for someone who was very human, healthy, and “new”?  That narrowed it down to maybe half the city.

'Was it alone?  I mean, just the victim and the killer?'

'No.  Many were there.  Much activity.  Much noise.'

He frowned, then realized even its sense of time wasn't the same as his.  His eyes met those of the shaman.  Maybe it
was
hopeless.

'What about the other human who died in your Park today, near the baseball pitch, between the sun when it was highest, and now: what can you tell me about that?'

The motion of the leaves slowed.  'No other human died.'

There was a long pause, and from the corner of his eye Garland saw his partner's face flush red, belying the deceptively friendly tone that he
started
with.  'You really are a complete, one hundred percent nilspec waste of dirt, aren't you?'  The spirit of course, seeing Berlusconi's aura, shrank back even as the shaman put out a restraining hand.  At the look he received from the detective, the shaman lowered it just as quickly.

'Berlusconi.'  Garland stopped, hunting for words that wouldn't rile his partner further.  'Quit scaring the spirit.'

His partner bristled but clamped his mouth shut, and they went through the motions.

A weary hour later, a good distance away at the second crime scene, that of the murdered boy, the fresh invocation of the Park's spirit simply failed.  They'd come here despite the shaman's protests that mere proximity to the scene of the second murder wouldn't tell them anything more.  Strangely though, the magic hadn't worked at all.

Two uniformed officers stood now at the foot of the wooded hillside.  Above them, shadows clawed down through the trees in the afternoon sunlight toward the three figures beyond the police marker tapes.  Garland wasn't a Sensitive, but even he felt there was something wrong here.  Not eerie, or creepy, though.  Something somehow worse.  As if something subtle but important had been stripped away.  Hollowed out.