Yarrow (21 page)

"In the old days," Peter said, "people used to think of blood as the life principle— a rejuvenating force. It was symbolic of our life essence."

"I follow you. So if vampires are real, the legends just mixed up what they were taking from us. Or at least how. I suppose drawing out somebody's soul doesn't make as good copy as sucking the blood from their veins— even before Hammer Films got hold of the story."

"If,"
Peter said, "you're willing to accept that that's what the Dude is in the first place."

Ben shrugged. "The real problem is that I don't think a crucifix or stake is going to do this guy in. Sunlight sure doesn't seem to bother him. Christ, will you listen to us? Maybe we're both going off the deep end."

Peter thought about Cat and about what they all might be facing if the Dude decided to live up to their wild speculations.

"I almost wish we were," he said.

Ben shook his head. "Not me. I'd rather the world went crazy than to think it was just me." He glanced at his watch. "Gotta run, Peter. I'll see you later."

"Why don't you give Cat a call?"

"You're really turning into a little matchmaker, aren't you?"

"Whatever does the trick."

Ben thought about that for a moment, then grinned. "Well, maybe I will," he said.

The General Assignment Unit of the Ottawa Police Force took up almost half of the third floor of the main station at Nicholas and Waller. In his office, overlooking the construction of the new Rideau Centre, Detective-Sergeant Derek Potter reread the report that had crossed his desk earlier that morning. On the surface it didn't give him much to go on. But when you put it together with one or two other items that had come in over the past few months…

He tapped the end of a pencil against his upper lip as he thought about it. They had a regular community of about forty winos in the downtown core. In General Assignment you didn't deal with them that much, but you became aware of them quickly enough as you made your way up from patrolman to detective. Every big city had them, though Ottawa— for all that it boasted being Canada's fourth largest city— could actually claim relatively few.

"Got your files, Potsy."

He looked up as Detective Bill McKinty sat down beside his desk, a handful of files under one arm and a coffee in either hand. Black with sugar for Potter, cream, no sugar, for himself. Bill was dark-haired where Potter was blond, beefier in the jowls and deeper in the chest. He stood an inch taller than Potter's 6'1".

Potter accepted his coffee with a nod. "Did you have a look through them?" he asked, tapping his pencil on the desk.

Bill opened the top file. "Crazy Dick, a.k.a. Richard T. Brown," he read. "The T stands for Terrance. His body was found behind Coles on the Mall at 0705 by Constable Evans on July twentieth. The coroner's report puts his death at approximately 0400. Cause of death: massive hemorrhaging due to the fact that his fucking throat was slit, ear to ear."

"Same M.O. as O'Dennehy here," Potter said. His pencil moved from the desk to the report in question:

"You got it," Bill said. "Only the rest of these files you called up don't fit in. The coroner lists them all as dying of natural causes."

"How many?"

"Four, not including Crazy Dick."

"In… what? Two months?"

"Closer to three."

"Something stinks here," Potter said. He lifted his gaze. "Something's killing off our street people, one by one."

"Two guys…" Bill began.

Potter shook his head. "Six. Not including the hooker that Wells is working on. Same M.O. again— throat slit. She had thirty-five bucks and change in her pocket and not a penny was touched. Happened in a back alley."

"I forgot about her," Bill said. "Wasn't Wells all set to pin it on her pimp?"

"Yeah. Except it turned out she really
was
working freelance— if you want to go with the word on the street."

"What do you think, Potsy?"

"I think she fits. I think someone's got a hard-on for low-lifes."

"So we've got three—"

"No," Potter broke in. "We've got seven. Those other four fit in."

He frowned, chewing on the end of his pencil before going back to tapping it on the report again. The same instincts that had helped him break the Hooper/Gibbs case, which got him his last promotion, were buzzing up a storm.

There was something going on, and he didn't like it. The trouble was that while there wasn't going to be a major problem getting Staff Sergeant Robinson to okay their tying the three knifings together, Potter couldn't see Robinson letting them reopen the other four cases. The verdict was in on them, and foul play wasn't a part of it, not unless you wanted to try and indict Mother Nature.

No, what they were going to have to do was work on those cases when they could— a bit here and a bit there, look for connections, until they had something hard that they could take to Robinson.

"I still don't see how they fit, Potsy," Bill said. "I mean, even if we've got a slasher with a yen for winos and hookers, that still doesn't explain those other four."

Potter shrugged. "I
can't
tie them in, not in any way that makes sense. But I know they're all part of the same puzzle." The pencil beat a slow tattoo against his upper lip as he thought it out. "Are you with me on this?"

Bill nodded. You didn't back out on your partner, even if he
was
going in for some extracurricular investigating. The brass tended to frown on that kind of shit, but what could you do? It wasn't like he could just walk out on Potsy.

"Then here's what we'll do. We'll run down some of O'Dennehy's friends, like…" He glanced at the report on his desk. "Ron Wilson. The usual routine. At the same time we'll check on any cases in the last, say, three months that are similar to those four winos. We're looking for people who are keeling over for no good reason. Not heart attacks or shit like that, just those that died of"— he paused deliberately— "natural causes."

"I'll take Wilson and start a preliminary check with the hospitals," Bill said.

Potter nodded. "I'll start with Wells's report on the hooker case then."

Bill began to get up, then sat down again. "Just what
are
we looking for, Potsy?"

"You tell me. The boogeyman, for all I know."

"Right."

"And Bill?"

"Yeah?"

"Let's keep a lid on this."

Bill smiled. "You think I want Robinson sniffing up
my
ass?"

When Bill left, Potter stared out the window to watch a crane work its load up to the roof of the half-completed Centre, where a handful of construction workers were clustered. His pencil lay forgotten in his hand.

Damn funny business, he thought. He sat like that for a long while, then sighed and pushed the O'Dennehy report to one side. Time to track down Wells and see what he had for them.

The stranger was neither an elf nor a gnome, merely a human— as human as Cat, if appearances were anything to go by. He looked up as she stepped from the woods, one hand straying casually to the hilt of a knife stuck in the ground by his knee. There was something about both Kothlen and Ben about him that brought a lump to Cat's throat. Her natural shyness leapt to the fore and she ended up just standing where she was, waiting for him to say something.

He was dressed the way Cat always imagined a Gypsy might look: heavy green corduroy trousers, woolen yellow shirt, scuffed leather boots, a rust jacket with many pockets, and two small earrings glinting gold in each ear. His complexion was swarthy, an earthy brown, but his features were neither African nor Indian. They were finely boned, the nose slender, the cheekbones almost gaunt. His hair was black and curled to the collar of his jacket.

He was in the middle of frying flatcakes on the hot stones beside his fire. A small pot with steeping tea was perched on the rocks beside it. At his side was a traveler's pack, its contents spilled out around him. His eyes narrowed slightly as he studied her. Not until he seemed sure she was alone did he relax. His hand left the hilt of the knife.

"So," he said. "The woods sent forth their waif."

He smiled infectiously, and Cat found herself grinning back. Laughter lines crinkled around his eyes, and she saw that he was older than she'd initially taken him to be. She'd thought about twenty, what with the slender frame and the boyish tilt to his head. She adjusted that figure by about fifteen years.

"I hope you don't mind me barging in like this," she began.

"Not at all. I haven't had company for the better part of a fortnight. My name's Toby Weye. At your service. Care for some breakfast?"

"I… yes. Please. My name's Cat Midhir."

"A potent name."

"What do you mean?"

"I was told that these are the Katmeiny Hills. As in a multitude of cats. As in your name."

"Oh."

She made her way to the fire and smiled her thanks when he unfolded his blanket to give her a dry place to sit.

"So," Toby said as he flipped over the cakes. "Are you a native or a traveler? Or a traveling native? A native traveler?"

"A traveler. I come from"— she waved her hand in a general western direction— "back there."

"Ah. Do you want your tea plain, or with honey?"

"Honey, please."

"And are you fey?"

"I… what do you mean?"

"Fey. As in kin to elves and such. Magicky. Able to ride the wind and live in hills. To change your shape. To lure astray the lonely traveler. That sort of thing."

"No. I… I'm a storyteller."

"Ah."

Cat was finding it a little hard to keep up with him. He talked quickly, changing topics as the whim struck him. And his questions were curious, to say the least.

"What do you do?" she asked.

"I," he replied, handing her a steaming mug, "make a lovely cup of tea."

"No. I mean, I'm sure you do, but I was asking what you did for a living. Are you a Gypsy?"

"A tinker, a tailor. A Gypsy, a traveling man. You guessed by my pack?"

"Well, sort of. More from the way you look."

"Tinkerish, as it were?" Toby smiled and took a sip of his own tea.

"Yes."

"I'm afraid I must disappoint you. I
am
a traveling man, but not a tinker. And the reason I travel is that the Road calls to me— the Secret Road that wanders uphill and down, through this world and that."

He drew his flatcakes back from the fire's heat and leaned back against a stone to recite in a bardic fashion that put Cat in mind of Kothlen again.

He cocked an eye at her and she nodded politely. "Do you know that Road?" he asked.

"I think so."

"It's the Green Man that makes it merry, for a merry fellow he is. But gentle it is too, as a place the fairies dance could be called gentle. Fey, do you see?"

"What do you hope to find when you get to the end?"

"But that's the thing!" Toby said. "It's following the Road is all. It has no end. Like Ouroborus— the great serpent swallowing its own tail. It's the doing, Mistress Cat, not the done. For once it's done, you've only to begin again, hey?"

"I think I understand now," Cat said. "I've just never heard it expressed quite like that before."

It was like her writing, she thought. Each book had its own theme, but there was one underlying thread that bound them all together, and each book took that thread— that Road— a little further along the way. If she ever got to the end, there wouldn't be anything left to write about. Maybe that was why she was having so much trouble now, what with—

"Have a cake?" Toby asked. "There's plenty. Honey or berries? Or both?" He held up a wooden bowl brimful of strawberries in one hand, a small clay honey jar in the other.

"Berries, please. You're very kind to share your breakfast with me."

"And you're very kind to stop and talk with me. That wood now." With his chin he pointed to the direction she'd come from. "Not this one here, but the one beyond the valley. It's through it that you've come?"

"Yes."

"And were there ghosts?"

Cat started. "What do you mean?"

"I was told to take the haunted wood, once I left these hills."

"That's Mynfel's wood."

Toby put an index finger along either side of his head and wiggled them. "She's one of the horned folk?" he asked.

Cat nodded.

"Then that's the way I'll be going. Pity you're heading the other way." He passed her a flatcake with berries rolling from it. "It's fingers only, I'm afraid."

"I'm not really going anywhere in particular," Cat said around a mouthful.

"Oh?" He looked her up and down. "You're not exactly equipped for wandering the wilds, are you?"

"It's a long story."

"That's right! You said you were a storyteller. I love to hear the flap of my own lips— comes from wandering about on my own so much, you see— but I like a story better, so off you go."