Wild Thing (40 page)

'Dainty little sliv like you, alone in these dark alleys – could get tasty cruel, eh?'

'I'm not a dainty little sliv, and I can take care of myself.'  She spun around to her left as the thin man now came almost within arm's reach, and she jabbed a finger at him.  'And don't
you
come any closer if you know what's good for you!'  He stopped, then moved back a little, smiling like he knew something she didn't.

She returned her attention to the grinning ogre.  'And I wasn't talking to you,' she added, before turning back to the handsome one.

For just a moment, she shivered, cold, and looked around.  That had felt kind of like… was
Robo
around? 
Here?
She did her not-looking, but didn't
see
him.  In fact, it'd been a long time since she'd seen Robo.  Not since the cold attack that one night.  Years ago. 
Could
he be out here, in the city?

The third man laughed.  'Rufe, it does appear the lady is conversing with Randy,' he mocked.  'Seems like good looks win again, eh?'

She glanced at the new speaker.  Registered a pretty, almost feminine face: fine features and skin, large eyes.

'Oh!  You're Altered!'  She took a step away from him, turned a little to “Randy.”  'You hang around with
mutants
?  Aren't you worried you'll get infected too?'

Randy's chin came up, and suddenly he wasn't smiling.  'Hey, they're not infected.  They're just different.  Where'd you get this “infected” smek from, bim?'

The other two were scowling now as well.  'Well, they are, aren't they?  The Melt virus infected
him
and he mutated,' she said, pointing to the ugly hairless ogre, 'and this guy has all sorts of weird viruses re-writing his DNA.  They're not really human any more, are they?'

'You dumb little sliv,' growled the ogre, from her right.  He reached out and grabbed her shoulder, spun her round to face him.  'I think it's time someone-'

She'd hesitated almost too long, not happy about having to touch him even now that his hand rested on her bare shoulder.

Grimacing as she turned, she stepped in toward him.  All the force of her disgust went into the blow that exploded into his stomach.  She felt something rupture: his eyes glazed and his hand slipped from her shoulder as he bent over.  With a scowl of distaste, she hammered her bare knee up solidly into his descending chin.

There was an unpleasant cracking sound, then he fell heavily to the pavement.  Leeth backed away in revulsion, dusting her knee clean.

The Altered ran to his prone friend.  Knelt down to take his pulse, then looked up, disbelief morphing the elegant planes of his face into an angry mask of hatred.  'She killed him!  The dirty little racist
sluk
killed Rufe!'  Something appeared in his hand as he got to his feet, a blade flicking out with an ominous snick.

'Hey, guys, no, wait.'  From the corner of her eye she saw the thin one back further away.  'We don't need more heat.'

The pretty-faced one stepped forward, his knife weaving competently back and forth.  She felt light-headed for a moment as the reality of her situation sank in.  Suddenly everything was happening in slow motion.  The Altered moved in, his blade slashing across, and she grabbed his wrist and hooked a leg behind him, intending to throw him down, like she'd seen Nightshade do on the trid a dozen times.

But he twisted, grabbing her, and they fell in a tangle, the knife slamming point first into the bitumen.  His hand, now gripped by hers, slid down roughly off the hilt and onto the blade.  He cried out in pain as it cut him, but thrust his other arm across her throat even as his weight descended on her, forcing her breath out in a rush.

She couldn't breathe.  She tried to knee him, but the angle was wrong.  Chest heaving, she tried vainly to draw in air, tried to pull his arm from her throat against the full weight of his upper body.

She struck at him, but he ignored her blows like they had no strength.  She didn't understand.  He seemed to be getting stronger.  She struck again, and somehow he tore his other hand, bleeding and knife-less, from her grasp and brought it, too, to her throat.

I might lose
, she realized, staring up into the Altered's livid face.  The thought brought a flood of shame that scourged like flame. 
No!
she swore to herself. 
Never
.  Deep inside, something took fire, spread up her arms.  Snarling low in her throat she raked both hands crosswise across his stomach; felt them slice deeply into him: and rejoiced.  Wet heat flooded over her as the Altered's triumphant glare drained into disbelief.

'No!' he whispered, face suddenly ashen.  He fell off her.

She rolled to one side, sucking in huge breaths.

'You little bitch!'  Randy snarled as he moved closer.  She looked up as he kicked the abandoned knife away, well out of her reach.  He was gazing down at his dying friend, his handsome face a mask of anger and grief.

'With his own blade!'  His voice shook with rage.

With her breathing returning to normal, the strange weakness fading, she gathered herself to leap.

And saw he had a gun.

Her heart sank.  Then a surge of anger burned the feeling away.  All she'd wanted to do was go to the Red Fist Dojo!  She looked up from the gun, and saw his eyes now on hers.

'That's right, bitch!  Look at me!'  He raised the weapon till the barrel pinned her with its ugly dead stare like a shark's black eye.

Thought abruptly vanished.  She dived forwards, launching herself desperately up at him; registered the look of surprise on his face as he fell back a step.  Her hand lashed out as the gun sounded like a thunderclap and something smashed into her.

Then her hand ripped through his throat and he flew backwards.  She fell slowly, fighting the darkness swimming up from all around, swallowing her.  She didn't even feel the impact when she hit the ground.
 

Chapter 47 

In the New Francisco soup kitchen, Marc Disten froze, ladle poised just above the troll's large and very empty food bowl, head turning from side to side slowly, unseeing
.  T
he Call
.

The old troll standing eagerly before the mouth-watering tureen of Irish stew, his limbs twisted by gargantuan rheumatism, stared down at the suddenly-unmoving man holding the brimming ladle, then looked across to the manager.  Maisie, though, had her hands full with some gangers who'd sauntered in, looking for fun.

Abruptly, the ladle went back into the drum of soup and the man's eyes focused.  'It is time to leave.  There is important work to do.'

The troll watched his server untie his apron and then cross the room, heading for the street while Maisie and the other volunteers called out angrily.  They started after him, demanding to know what he was doing, where he was going?

The troll looked around shiftily, then picked up the entire drum of soup and began gulping it down swiftly, before anyone noticed.

Disten dropped the apron on the ground, oblivious to the angry shouts from the drafty room behind him.  She was here.  Back in the city.  The pull was strong.

Trotting north along Potrero, he covered ground swiftly.  But slowed, passing the remnants of the old General Hospital.  The sense of anguished confusion from the many people inside flooded out, calling.

Their pain could be stilled; their confusion ended.  In contrast, the call of the girl was fainter, less appealing.

For long seconds Disten stood, considering.

Moments later he was running north again.  Gaining access to the closely monitored patients in the hospital would not be as easy as isolating derelicts from the soup kitchen, to bring to clarity.  That much had been learned from those deaths.  So much that could now be shown to the girl; which she would in turn reveal.

Not far, now.  Disten jogged on.

The female was very close.  Yet though the ugly disturbance she caused was stronger, it started to diffuse, making it harder to locate her.

Now was not the time to rush.  Instead, more care was needed, to follow the dwindling Pull.  Staring around the deserted, derelict streets, Disten paused, narrowing focus to just the pain of the chaos she radiated.

She was close.  Why was the sensation fading, weakening?

Stepping around the corner, the answer became clear.

Soon he stood amidst the dead and dying.  The opportunity had been spoiled.  Disten's gaze swept back and forth.  Wasted deaths.

The barbs of emotion that radiated from her, plucking and pricking, continued fading.  In the wristcomm's harsh light the girl's skin looked unnaturally pallid.  Bending down, Disten checked the pulse, felt it flutter weakly, then stop.  Instantly, blissfully, the ugly chaos was gone, smoothed out into the simple regular patterns of sanity.  The girl lay dead.

Yet moments later, chaos flared like migraine lightning across the whole scene.  There was a presence nearby, wild with disorder.

Disten stood and turned, sensing it, feeling it draw toward him.  Something about it felt… linked to the girl?  Affected by the girl?

As he approached, it stilled, then drifted closer, before suddenly flaring again, jerking away; then, it too was gone.  Fled?

Disten stood unmoving for a minute, considering the bodies.  Useless.  The… spirit?  Had it been the spirit of the girl?  It had felt very different, however.  Far more ordered.  Would it return?

The bodies were checked; searching for CIDs, clues….  Nothing.

Distant sirens wailed their ever-present cries through the night sky.  Wind plucked at the jacket.

There was nothing more to be found, or done, here.

At last, Disten walked back along the route traversed earlier.  The hospital should still be able to provide at least one useful subject.
 

Chapter 48 
 

Leeth had disappeared soon after dinner.  Now Harmon sought her out, though he wasn't entirely sure why, himself.  He did want to talk to her.  But more than that, a faint unease prickled at him.  Something about her distracted air during dinner…

Carefully Percepting while he opened the door to her bedroom – he'd learned the importance of quickly locating her in the dark – Harmon looked about cautiously.

Strange.  She wasn't in sight.  He stepped back a little and fully opened his mind's eye to the flooding input of the Imaginal realm, twisting the well-learned detection pattern into existence to cast the spell.

Still no result.  Odd.  She must be shielded.  No doubt outside, beyond the inner Barrier, prowling the grounds in the dark.

The thought of going out there to look for her was… unappealing, somehow.

A horrible thought sent him racing back to his office, but tapping into the video feed from Godsson's cell showed the inmate simply muttering and pacing.  Alone.  Of course.

He even
visited
Godsson, but the man was no help.  If anything, he was worse than usual, rubbing his hands together and nodding as if he knew the answers to Harmon's question about where she was.

'Sara will be in my service soon enough, Alex,' he had smiled, beatifically.  'Although you and She have tempted her, when she is Perfect, she will be free.  All will be freed.'

There was something unnerving about those words.  Hurrying from the cells, he resumed his search in earnest.

In the cold outside, glad of his long coat, he stood just beyond the Institute's inner Barrier.  But recasting the simple detection spell still produced no result.  Now he was truly worried.  That implied she was neither within the inner barrier, nor within the outer.  She must be shielded.

She couldn't have left the Institute – she would have been unable to get out undetected.  Weren't there cameras, or something?

Had she fallen, knocked herself unconscious, perhaps?  No: the detection spell would still have given him a distance and direction.  She had to be shielded from the magic somehow. 
Oh, hell.  Had she been digging a tunnel, and the earth collapse
d on top of her?
  Magic could not penetrate the earth.  And digging a tunnel was just the sort of bizarrely stupid escapade she would dream up.

She could be trapped, suffocating to death.

Lights from the Institute cast a wan illumination across the cold and dewy lawn as he flung himself free of his body.  If the earth had collapsed, he should be able to sense
that
disturbance from the Imaginal.

Beside him, the brain-hurting Barrier englobed and hid the main building.  His spirit darted away, scouring the ground.

But
still
he failed to locate her.

Hours had passed now since their evening meal.  He could do a full Sending, of course, but he would need an hour just to refresh the ritual circle for the location spell.  He called the security officer.

'Shanahan, have you seen Sara?  I can't seem to find her.  Is she out wandering in the grounds again?'

'No, Doc.  Everybody's inside.  Here, I'll check.'

Harmon tried to stay unconcerned as his co-worker queried his network.

'No.  She went outside earlier, but came back about an hour and a half ago.'  He could hear the grimace in Shanahan's voice.  'Though she's given the system the slip once or twice.  You want me to run a full search?'

'No.  It's probably easier for me.  No need to activate all the systems,'
and file a report tomorrow
.

Shanahan didn't sound concerned.  'Okay.  But ping me if you change your mind, Doc.'

'Certainly.'

Annoyed by the cold of his now-damp coat, he strode through the dark to the little-used Rituals block.  The small circle there, set up for clairvoyance, should be adequate.  Abruptly he stopped and reversed his path.  First, he'd need something of Leeth's.  Hair from her hairbrush.

He was cursing under his breath by the time he finally returned to the rituals area with the necessary material.  Damn the girl.  It would be after midnight before he'd locate her, now.