Heightened senses threaded through the jungle of impressions that assailed him. It was not a policeman he sensed, closing in. Nor anything mortal. It was something from beyond the herenow. He couldn’t pinpoint it—neither its position, nor exactly what it was. There was just something sharing the night with him, something that had as much in common with city streets as a wolf might have with the plains of the air.
Kieran reassessed his position. Go on, or. . . . Or what?
He went on, taking up his pace once more as though nothing untoward had made him pause to look down from the top of the bridge. He was nearing Faces now, knew he was still early. Knowing Toby, he’d not show up until a half hour or so before the first set. Until then . . . Kieran saw the yellow and green sign of Patty’s Place across the street. A place to wait, within view of the club, but off the street.
He crossed Bank, sensing his unseen watcher follow. It was pointless to turn and look for it. He knew, if he turned, there’d be nothing there. Nothing for even his deepened sight to view.
“There are beings,” Tom had told him once, “who, though they are not of this world, this here and now, still manifest in this reality from time to time. The original inhabitants of this land called them manitous—the little mysteries. Europeans call them elves. Use the terms if you will, but only for the sake of convenience, for they are of many kinds.
“You’ll sense them rarely. Rarer still will you see them. They are drawn here by power and the display of strong emotions. Witches and mages are their primary interest, though you will find them often in times of great sorrows, joys, angers and fears. They are drawn by the use of magic, or by the knowledge that magic is about to be used. So you will feel them from time to time, know their presence; but without their consent, that is as close to them as you will ever get.”
“Are they dangerous?” Kieran had asked.
The old man shrugged. “Everything has the potential to be dangerous. Mostly the manitous are curious, but be wary in your dealings with them, Kier, should the occasion arise. It’s best to ignore them—at least until they wish to be known by you. And remember this: No matter how humanlike they might appear, they are not of this world. Their ways are different from ours.”
It was such a being Kieran sensed now. He hesitated in front of Patty’s Place, for he heard sounds now. Whatever watched him had grown in number. There were rustlings—leather against leather, bead clicking against quill. Murmurs that sounded like wind, but he knew them to be voices. The old man had taught him many old tongues and he found that he could almost make out individual words. A soft tapping, muffled and eerie like the pads of fingers brushing against the leather skin of a drum, reached his ears.
They were all around him, he realized. And something else was present as well—though this was more a premonition of a presence than the actual presence itself. It reminded him of the feeling he’d had last night when he’d been looking at the strange gables and rooftops of Tamson House from across Bank Street. A sense of maleficence. A warning prickle settled along his spine, though whether the danger was represented by his hidden watchers, this other presence, or from something inside the restaurant, he wasn’t sure.
Standing here, he told himself, was doing no good. Maintaining a calmer show than he felt inwardly, he entered the restaurant, pausing in the doorway to give the place a look over. He’d been here before—many times, in fact. But that had been three years ago.
His earlier premonition began to scrape a raw pattern down his spine. Get out! his senses were screaming. Now! Before it’s too late. There was something in the shadows at the back of the restaurant that drew him. A familiar face, or . . . Before he had a chance to investigate it, a young woman who’d been sitting at a windowside table stood up. Power emanated from her. From her . . . No. From her ring. As she stood up to get his attention, his gaze locked on that tiny band of gold. He knew that ring. He heard Tom’s voice in his head.
“There’s so much to tell you,” the old man was saying. “I wonder sometimes how my own master knew what to give and what to pass on. Does no good to give it all, Kier. You’ll see that when it’s your own turn to take on an apprentice. There’s things best learned on your own, in your own way. Others that need to be shown. Take this ring.” He held up a gold band, a twin to the one on Sara’s finger. “Looks to be plain gold—except for the ribboned design. But there’s more to it than that. Can you feel it?”
Tom had passed the ring over to Kieran then. Kieran almost dropped it. He was startled by the intensity of . . . what? The emotion locked in it?
“We in the craft,” Tom explained, “who follow the Way, no matter which path . . . we call it a gifting ring, Kier. It is for friends who are more than friends, who are . . . special. When you meet someone wearing one of these you’ll know you can trust them. There is much locked in that metal—love, power, knowledge. Those who wear them often grow to follow the Way themselves—the ring acting as a catalyst of sorts.”
“Where do the rings come from?” Kieran had asked.
“We make them. Later . . . when your studies are more advanced, I’ll show you how it’s done. It entails metalwork—oh, yes. But so much more. A balanced heart, a deep taw, silent as a mountain tarn, and one more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“A friend. Someone worthy to wear it. Without that, the ring is nothing.”
“What happens when the owner of a ring dies and it gets passed on to someone else?”
The old man smiled. “Gifting rings have a knack of finding their way into the right hands. Or should I say onto the right fingers?”
The right fingers . . .
Kieran stared, from the ring on the woman’s finger to her face. Then he saw the man behind her, rising from his table. Friend? His gaze flicked back to Sara and he shook his head slowly, witchlights blossoming in his eyes. Friends didn’t set you up.
Constable Paul Thompson had been nursing a cup of cold tea for the past three-quarters of an hour. He’d taken a seat further back in the restaurant where he could keep an eye on Sara without being too conspicuous. He wasn’t really worried about her noticing him. Most people couldn’t spot a tail if their life depended on it. Which was too bad, because if you were being tailed, your life just might be on the line.
Thompson figured this to be pretty much of a routine assignment, but he wasn’t going to take any chances. After last night, he was determined to stick as close to the subject as he could, no matter how innocent she seemed. He knew she’d come here for more than dinner. She was waiting for someone. That was obvious from the way she kept checking the street through the window. The thing was who was she waiting for? When he answered that, he might just come up with the break they were looking for.
Policework can be tedious. No one knew that better than Thompson. He’d seen enough of its tedium on his seven years on the Force. It wasn’t all car chases and shoot-outs like TV and the movies made it out to be. In fact it rarely was. Though being assigned to Tucker’s special squad had certainly increased the likelihood of things getting a little more interesting than they might, say, on an assignment in the Territories.
He was about to order a second tea when the front door of the restaurant opened. Ho-lee shit! he thought, recognizing Kieran at the same time as Sara. So this was who she’d been waiting for.
His reaction, however, was different from hers.
While she was starting from her table, he lunged to his feet, drawing his .38 from under his coat. The big steel barrel centered on Kieran as Thompson braced his left hand on his right wrist, assuming the tried and true position that had been drummed into him during his early days of training at the Academy in Regina.
“Freeze!” he cried out.
His voice boomed in the small restaurant. He felt his palm slicken. “You move, and you’re gone—got it?”
Sara never heard the constable’s command. Looking into Kieran’s eyes, the restaurant lost its reality
for her. The light grew dimmer and the air shivered like a heat mirage. She sensed invisible presences all around her, watching. She heard the sound of muffled drumming mixed with the click of beads and quills. As the light in the restaurant grew fainter still, she began to make out shapes—tall slender beings dressed in buckskins and rough-woven cloth. The swirling beadwork on their shirts was as intricate as the ribbonwork on her ring. But the designs weren’t Celtic.
Her throat grew tight and she was finding it hard to breathe. She could make out the faces of the watchers now. Their features were pinched, the skin drawn tight across their facial bones, their eyes large and vaguely owl-like. The tips of their ears rose higher than eartips should. A few had headdresses made from long feathers and dangling quills. One had two tiny pronged horns on his brow. Oh, God! They were growing from its brow, she realized.
Her legs started to shake. She could see the drums. Every second being held one under its arm. Slender fingers tapped their rhythms. The sound came from all around. The smell of a forest was in the air—a rich, dark scent of cedar and pine. The restaurant began to sway in her sight and she put out a hand to keep her balance. Her trembling fingers came into contact with Kieran’s arm and gripped it tightly.
A spark seemed to fly up her own arm at the contact—like static electricity, only stronger. Suddenly she was seeing through Kieran’s eyes, sharing his thoughts. She understood his anger/fear/sorrow in a confusing rush, then was swept under the deluge of his emotions. He was thinking simultaneously on many levels:
The watchers were not dangerous, for all that their drumming and clicking was building up tension like the cheap soundtrack of some grade B horror flick. The woman hadn’t set him up—on the other hand, she couldn’t help him either. The visible danger was the constable with his big .38 pointed at them. The prime danger was something else, that indefinable essence of evil he’d first sensed hovering over Tamson House and later recognized outside the restaurant.
He searched for it, found it in the shadows at the back of the restaurant, behind the constable, outside the circle that the drumming watchers had made around the woman and himself. It was a vague shape, a barely definable outline of . . . what? Some creature. Bear . . . but not-bear. He felt the touch of a taw far more powerful than his own—a silence that was dark with the promise of power. It was old, very old, and twisted like the roots of a willow. Merciless.
The drummers quickened their tempo and a shiver ran up Kieran’s spine. As though that were a starter’s pistol, signaling the beginning of some bizarre contest, the tableau broke. Sara screamed, seeing the monster from her dreams through Kieran’s eyes. The constable took a step forward, then the shadows lunged from the wall and fell upon him. He twisted out of shape—man into creature. The .38 fell from talons that could no longer hold it. His shirt and jacket tore apart as his chest swelled, corded muscle growing on corded muscle, matted fur covering his skin. His mouth gaped and yellow canines protruded an inch from his gums.
The momentum of his forward motion carried him through the circle of drummers, claws lashing out. One of the drummers caught a blow and was smashed to the floor, pale blood issuing from the ruin of its chest. The drumming stopped with an abruptness that was threatening in itself. Kieran could hear the world of the here and now for a moment—the screams of the restaurant’s patrons as they fought to get out the small exit. The rattle of chairs as they were knocked to the floor. The smash of beer mugs as they spilled, rolled off the tables and exploded in showers of thick glass.
The monster that the constable had become howled and charged forward. Kieran pushed Sara aside and met the beast’s rush with outstretched hands. As his fingers touched the matted fur, he loosed his power. Red-gold magefire blossomed from his hands. The smell of the beast’s fetid breath was overcome by the rank stink of burned flesh and fur that filled the air. One paw scraped down Kieran’s side, the claws ripping through the thick cloth of his pea jacket and shirt to tear the flesh underneath, but Kieran’s defense had been too quickly executed for the monster to do more.
As it began to fall toward him, Kieran sidestepped, pulling Sara with him. When it hit the floor, the furry bulk dissolved, and the constable lay there—his shirt and jacket torn, his flesh seared black. His features were twisted into a mask that plainly showed the horror of his death.
Kieran stumbled against a table. Bile rose in his throat. His side felt like it was on fire and he could feel his own blood seeping down his leg. As he went to his knees, the drumming started up once more. He jerked his head up to stare at the strange beings, but the manitous paid him no mind. They went out of focus and the restaurant spun in his sight. Sara trembled with the burden of the bond she still shared with him. She’d seen all he’d seen, felt all he’d felt. The earlier confusion of his emotions was compounded now by a terrible guilt at what he’d done. He’d taken a life. Never before . . . Lord dying Jesus! Never before. . . .
The drumming increased its tempo. The figures of the drummers were vague outlines that stamped about them, encircling them, feet moving in time, moving faster with each step. Deep at the back of the restaurant, like a clot of darkness blacker still than the shadows around it, the evil presence watched. Through his blind despair Kieran, and Sara through him, could sense it mocking them. Then, with a rumble that shook the foundations of the restaurant, it was gone.
Its disappearance did nothing to ease their shared pain and grief. The shadows, rather than growing lighter with the evil’s absence, closed in on all sides. These were like the bulk of tall trees now, pines with needles that whispered as the wind rasped them, one against the other. The herenow they knew was gone. Restaurant, the street outside, the city itself—all gone.
They could still hear the sound of drumming, faintly against the whisper of the pines. The shadows of the trees pressed closer, enveloping them, until only the darkness existed. The last thing they heard was the silence that followed the abrupt cessation of the drumming.
When the barman finally dared to step back into Patty’s Place and looked in, he saw only the shambles of the restaurant and, in the midst of a cleared space, the corpse of the constable, his limbs splayed awkwardly like the cotton arms of a rag doll. His clothing lay about him like a tattered pall. His skin was charred black and his eyes stared sightlessly into unknown distances.
The contents of the barman’s stomach rose up in his throat and he turned away to throw up. In the distance, strident sirens could be heard approaching.
11:45, Wednesday evening.
Tucker sat in his office, his desk lit only by a tabletop lamp. The yellow glare mercilessly highlighted the black on white of the statements he was reading. The rest of the room was in darkness. He reread snatches of the barman’s statement:
“There was this sound . . . sorta like drumming. It came from all around. And then these . . . I don’t know. Shapes. Vague shapes seemed to be everywhere. Then the . . . the constable stood up, pulling out his gun. I didn’t know he was a cop then. . . .”
Tucker leaned back in his chair and wearily rubbed his eyes. Vague shapes. What the hell was that supposed to mean? For that matter, what the hell was Thompson doing pulling his piece in a crowded restaurant, for Christ’s sake? Tucker looked back at the statement.
“Then he changed into something . . . like Lon Chaney Jr. in The Wolf Man, you know? I swear! I never saw anything like it!”
Tucker had interviewed the barman himself and remembered the fear etched in the man’s face. His name was Timothy Driver. Thirty-six years old. Married. One child. He’d been employed at Patty’s Place for fourteen months. No criminal record. No record of psychiatric problems. Just a plain joe. Not the kind of a guy to make up a bullshit story like this.
Tucker sighed. He had another twenty-some witnesses to corroborate Driver’s story. Not to mention the restaurant itself. The place was in shambles. Not to mention Thompson’s body, Je-sus! He’d looked like someone had taken a blowtorch to him.
Just what were they dealing with here?
Tucker tapped his fingers against each other and went through what they had. Facts. They had twenty-three witnesses’ statements corroborating Driver’s. Facts. Thompson was tailing Sara Kendell. Obviously she’d been waiting there for a meeting with Foy. (Wait’ll he got his hands on her! Swearing she didn’t know anything. . . . ) Facts. Thompson pulls his gun, then turns into the wolfman. Foy blasts him with—what? Then both he and the Kendell woman split.
These weren’t facts. From the moment Thompson pulled his piece, the whole thing turned surreal. Except what had happened to Kendell and Foy?
“They never came out,” Driver’s statement read. “I’ll swear to that. I was standing where I could see both the front door and the one on the side, and they never came out. I was the first one in—it couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes after . . . you know, it all started to happen. But they weren’t there. I can’t figure it out. That Foy guy took a bad hit. He wasn’t going to be traveling anywhere very far. Or very fast.”
Foy took a hit. But by the time Tucker got there, there wasn’t even any evidence that Thompson had ever turned into this monster. They just had the statements of the witnesses to go on. Who was to say that Foy’s wound was real? Who was to say that any of this was real? He’d talked to Hogue after the first few statements were taken, and Hogue was just as baffled as the rest of them. Some sort of mass hallucination, he tagged it.
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