by R. L. King
“There’s the street,” Charles said, poking him in the shoulder and pointing. “Hang a left here.”
Broadway was long, seemingly deserted except for a few derelict cars, and had even fewer working lights than the main drag. The buildings were large and obviously long abandoned, set back from the street and towering up on either side like some kind of malevolent urban canyon. Jason kept checking his mirrors, unable to shake the feeling that somebody was watching their every move. In front of them, the beam from the Harley’s headlight picked out drifts of trash blowing lazily across the broken asphalt.
“I don’t like this, man,” Charles said.
“I don’t either. Keep your eyes open—let’s find this place. I feel like a sitting duck out here in the road.” He was trying hard not to think about snipers. Not that snipers were anything he’d ever encountered before except in books, but if there were any around, this would be the ideal place for them. It would be nearly impossible to see a figure perched on one of these high roofs.
They cruised the entire street, and by the time they reached the T-intersection at the other end, they hadn’t seen anything resembling a fruit-packing plant. “You sure we got the right street?” Charles asked.
“You heard her too. Broadway.” Jason pointed at the sign, which hung at a crazy angle on its pole. “That’s where we are.”
“Maybe we went the wrong way. Turn around and let’s look again.”
Jason made a wide U-turn and rumbled back down toward where they’d come from, his eyes constantly swiveling left and right. They’d gotten about halfway back to the intersection when he spotted it: a large building with corrugated metal sides, set even farther far back from the street. One of the flickering streetlights happened to be nearby, allowing him to pick out the faded words Del Valle Packing Co. on the large sign near its front entrance. “How the hell did we miss that?” he asked nobody in particular.
“Hey, look.” Charles poked his shoulder again and pointed. Jason had to squint to see it, but over the riot of colorful gang graffiti covering most of the surface, he made out the triangle-and-rays symbol Willow had drawn on the paper in his pocket. It was spray-painted in white over top of the gang tags, and looked relatively fresh. “She said look for that. This must be the place.”
Jason nodded, already turning into the plant’s large parking area. The Harley bounced and juddered over bits of torn-up concrete and patches of bare dirt with small, scrubby plants poking out of them. Behind him, he felt Charles’ tenseness like it was a tangible thing. “See anything moving?”
“Nothin’.”
“Well, they wouldn’t be out here. They’re probably holed up inside somewhere. Damn, I wish I had a flashlight. You don’t, do you?”
“Sorry, man. Fresh out.”
Jason parked the bike in the shadows near the front of the building and dug a flare out of his tool bag. “Not great and it won’t last long, but better than poking around in the dark. Let’s save it ’til we need it, though—still need to find a way in.”
The front doors were locked and chained up with a heavy padlock. Motioning for Charles to follow him, Jason moved along the front of the building to the left edge, then started heading toward the rear, keeping close to the wall. It was very dark here but he didn’t want to use the flare until they were inside. He stumbled along, occasionally tripping over chunks of loose concrete, but managing to maintain his balance. Charles was slower, huffing along behind him.
After a couple minutes, they reached the rear of the building. They still hadn’t found any way in—there were windows, but they were too high up to climb to, and a single smaller door, locked as tightly as the front door had been. The whole place had the deserted air of a building that had not seen any human contact for a long time.
“You didn’t pick locks in your days as a gangbanger, right?” he whispered to Charles.
Despite his nervousness, the other man chuckled. “I was more the ‘stand around and look intimidating’ type.”
“Okay. Let’s keep going.”
The back part of the building definitely held more possibilities. The pavement sloped down and ended at a concrete loading dock, with steps leading up from ground level on the side nearest where they were. They could barely make out two large, rollup doors, both of which were closed, and a stack of rickety pallets and broken wooden boxes piled haphazardly on the dock next to the corrugated metal wall.
“Let’s try this,” Jason whispered. He headed up the steps to the dock, careful not to trip over the boxes and pallets. They were all over the place, all broken, but the biggest concentration seemed to be next to the wall. There was very little light back here, just the small amount filtering over from the two barely functional streetlights on the road bordering the back part of the plant.
Charles tried to push one of the roll doors upright, but it too was locked down. Jason discovered that the other one was too, as was the smaller door to the left of them.
“Well, damn.” He was getting frustrated. Either Willow had lied to them, they were at the wrong place, or whatever way you got into this place was hidden so well a team of bloodhounds couldn’t find it. He even glanced up to see if there were any broken windows back here, thinking he could pile pallets and make a suicidal attempt at climbing them, but he realized there was no way Verity and Willow’s friend could have done that, even if there had been windows here. There weren’t any.
“What do we do?” He wanted to hit something, punch a hole through this wall and get in there.
Charles didn’t answer; he was examining the small door, but didn’t appear to be getting anywhere. “Want to try the other side?” he asked at last.
“Yeah, in a sec.” Jason moved back to the stack of pallets and boxes. It was fairly tall—almost as tall as he was. Seemed weird that they were stacked like that, not neatly but kind of just tossed there. None of them appeared to be intact, either. He leaned in a little closer and that was when he saw it. There were no gang tags back here, just a lot of dirt and grime. Sprayed onto one of the larger sections of broken boxes was the triangle symbol. “Here,” he called. “Help me move these, willya?”
Together, he and Charles shoved aside the debris piled near where the sign was. “Aha!” Jason whispered in triumph. “There it is!” He pointed at a section of the corrugated metal that appeared to have been cut away from the side of the building, then carefully reattached with the seams lined up. It would be hard to spot for anyone who wasn’t looking for it, especially with all the junk in the way. “Keep a lookout, okay?” he requested as he squatted down to examine it.
In only a few seconds, he figured out how it worked: it was attached on one corner and spun on that point. All he had to do was shove it aside and slip through the resulting opening, which was about three feet square. “You can come on in now,” he said, scrambling further in to make room.
Charles, wider than Jason, had a little more trouble getting through, but soon the two of them stood inside on the dusty concrete floor of what felt like an enormous, empty space. Even though it was pitch dark in here, the area just felt gigantic.
“Light the flare,” Charles’s nervous voice came from beside Jason.
“In a sec.” Jason took a deep breath. “Verity?” he called, “You in here? It’s me, Jason—” His voice echoed insanely around the metal interior of the cavernous space.
“Don’t do that!” Charles whispered harshly, fumbling around and gripping his arm tight. “We don’t know what the hell is in here!”
“Shh!” Jason shook himself free of Charles’s grip and strained his ears to listen for any sounds as the echoes of their voices died. All he could hear were the beating wings of some small flying creatures hurtling fearfully around up in the rafters, no doubt startled by the voices.
“Light the flare, dammit,” Charles ordered.
Jason pulled off the top and struck it; instantly the immediate area around them was bathed in eerie red light, and their eyes were dazzled b
y the sudden illumination. The light didn’t extend out very far, but they could see that they were indeed standing in a large empty space. Looking at the floor, Jason saw the large bolts sticking up which undoubtedly had held down heavy machinery at one point, but that was all gone now. “Let’s look around.”
“They’re not answering—maybe they’re not here.”
“Or maybe they can’t answer. Maybe they’re hurt.” Jason held the flare out in front of him and began heading carefully across the floor, mindful of the many bolts and bits of debris strewn around. There was dust everywhere, but there were also footprints in it—somebody had been here recently. From the look of things, many somebodies.
Jason checked his pocket for his knife, and wished once again that he’d brought his gun. If we don’t find her tonight, tomorrow I’m finding a way to get another one. He pointed out the footprints. “Somebody’s been in here,” he said.
Charles nodded, but didn’t answer. He was staying close to Jason, obviously not wanting to get too far from the single light source.
Jason continued picking his way forward, frustrated that he couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead of him.
“Is that a door?” Charles’s whisper broke the silence and startled Jason.
“Where?”
Charles pointed. Sure enough, at the far corner of the room, which they’d almost reached, appeared to be a small pod of a room attached to the wall. It had a door with a tiny window set into it, and a larger window that looked out over the plant floor. This larger window was broken, glass spread out all over the floor in front of it. “Let’s take a look,” Jason whispered.
Together they moved over, and Jason shined the flare into the little room through the broken window.
It had clearly been an office at some point. A broken desk and a file cabinet with no drawers had been pushed back to the far wall to maximize the available space. A closer look revealed why: spread out around the floor in the middle of the room were shabby blankets, one patched sleeping bag, a couple tote bags, a number of empty grocery-store bags, food wrappers, and the remains of what looked like a hastily abandoned meal. The smell in the room was not just the musty, disused odor of the rest of the area, but also included more than a whiff of unwashed clothes, and a smaller hint of something else—ketchup, maybe? Definitely some sort of food.
“Somebody was here, and not long ago,” Jason told Charles, pointing.
Charles nodded. “If there were homeless folks here, they wouldn’t leave their stuff unless they had to get out in a hurry. Lot of folks, that’s all they got in the world.”
Jason tried the door: it was open. He entered the room, not sure what he was looking for, but thinking he might know it if he saw it. “Why would they leave? Do you think somebody broke in here?”
“Hard to say. No easy way to tell if there’s blood—not in that red light. But it doesn’t look like there was a struggle…”
Jason shined the flare around, trying to spot anything that looked like it might be blood, but didn’t see anything. It was like whoever had been here had simply gotten up and deserted their meal halfway through. “I don’t think anybody’s here anymore,” he said, unable to keep the tone of defeat from his voice. “Damn it, where is she?”
He was about to take a frustrated punch at the drawerless file cabinet when he heard something. He put up his finger and glanced warningly at Charles.
“What—?”
“Shh!” he hissed.
This time they both heard it: a loud rumbling sound, coming from outside—from the front of the building, if Jason’s ears were accurate.
“Shit!”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The good news was that Stone’s magical trace was still connected to Charles Davis. The shoelace still glowed, and when he glanced at the map, it still pointed him in a direction, indicating that the link was still active.
The bad news was that the man was apparently moving around a lot. Stone felt like he was playing a bizarre game of hide and seek, where every time it seemed as if Davis had finally settled somewhere and Stone got close, he’d skip tantalizingly away again. If Stone didn’t know better, he would have sworn Davis was trying to avoid him. That was absurd, of course: there was no way in the world that the man could have any idea Stone was tracking him magically. The only thing that might even be possible was that he’d phoned home and his roommate had told him that someone had called looking for him, but since Stone hadn’t identified himself and he was sure his American accent was good enough to pass muster in casual company, he couldn’t see how Davis could have made any kind of useful connection. Even in the unlikely event that the roommate had traced his phone number and discovered his identity, that still didn’t give him anything to go on: Stone didn’t exactly advertise the fact that he was a genuine mage capable of tracking people based on psychic emanations from their basketball shoes.
So, putting aside that line of conjecture, the only other likely explanation was simply that Davis was out by himself or with friends, perhaps club-hopping or just driving around. Stone knew he’d catch up with him eventually, but he hoped it was soon. It was mentally taxing work to keep the connection open, navigate in Davis’s current direction (which kept changing), and keep at least part of his mind on his driving. He’d been doing it for a little over three hours now, and he’d already had two scares. The first was when he thought he’d lost Davis after having to make a quick stop for gas an hour into the chase. Fortunately, he’d gotten close enough that after a couple of stressful moments he’d picked up the trail again.
The second was even more nerve-wracking: he’d been so busy trying not to lose the track that he hadn’t noticed that he’d ventured back into East Palo Alto and had picked up an escort: three leather-jacketed figures on motorcycles, all of them sporting the red and black DMW logo. He’d diverted quickly back on to the freeway and managed to lose them in traffic long enough to use a quick spell to disguise the Jaguar. They’d gone past, their heads tracking back and forth as they tried to spot him, but the close call left him rattled. He had no interest in tangling with gangers tonight, not as tired as he was.
At this point he was regretting his whole decision to do this, but too stubborn to stop. He had gone to all the trouble of obtaining Davis’s shoe and performing the ritual to track him; he was going to find the man, even if it took him the rest of the night. It had become a matter of professional pride. He had no idea what he was going to say to him when he found him (“Hello, I’m a mage. I’ve been tracking you for three hours using bits of your stolen shoe—seriously, invest in some Odor Eaters—and I want to know what you know about the disappearance of Verity Thayer, a girl I might or might not have a connection with,” hardly seemed the right approach) but he was nonetheless fixated on the idea that he was going to find him.
He glanced at the shoelace. The glow, when he shifted once again to magical sight, wasn’t as bright as it had been before. The magic was starting to fade. He’d have maybe another hour or two before it faded completely, but if he didn’t find Davis soon it would get progressively harder to track him if he continued to move. It was now after midnight: even if Davis were out drinking at a bar, the bars closed at two a.m. Surely he’d head home after that, if not earlier, especially since Stone knew from the boy at New Horizons that he had a shift tomorrow.
Davis was on the move again. The glowing indicator shifted, pointing to the north. It looked like he was off the freeway, heading east into Redwood City. Stone got over to the slow lane and began looking for an exit, taking occasional sideways checks at the map to make sure he was heading in the right direction. A few miles later he took the highway 84 exit, the same one he was convinced that Davis had taken.
The glow was steady, brighter. He was getting close again.
It took him another twenty minutes to triangulate, driving around while watching the map, the road, and checking to make sure that no one was following him. The last thing he needed was the DMW to sho
w up now, or some cop to get suspicious about his meanderings. When at last he turned onto Broadway Street and began cruising down a road dominated by warehouses and light industrial firms, the glow on the shoelace was so bright that it was illuminating part of the map. He slowed the car, creeping forward.
The glow vanished.
Stone stared at it, pulling over and idling at the curb in front of a warehouse’s dark bulk. “No, no, no!” he protested, picking up the map and the lace and shaking them as if trying to infuse them with power. He’d been so close! How had Davis—
A chill gripped him as the answer came to him.
There were only two ways a tracking like this could stop so abruptly: one was if the subject was under magical protection.
The other was if he was dead.
“Bugger…” Stone whispered. He looked around to make sure nobody was watching him, then put the car back in gear and moved slowly forward, watching almost exclusively with magical sight now. If Davis had been killed this close to him, the energy from his death would still be detectable, but he wouldn’t have long to find it. He’d have to hurry, if he was going to—
Magic flared, bright and strong, up ahead of him. Not death residue—it was too potent for that. Whatever was going on up there, black magic was definitely involved. If he could get to it soon enough, he might be able to help.
Without thinking, without considering the consequences of what he was about to do or how stiff and fatigued he still felt from the drive and the day’s expenditures, he gunned the engine, and the car surged forward.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“That’s bikes,” Charles said, glancing back toward where they’d come in. “Oh, man—Willow said to watch out for DMW. If that’s them—”