“Very well,” said Thronaris. “But you must understand. This needs to be kept quiet.”
“Might I ask why?” said Caina.
Thronaris scowled. “Baron Kaldmask.”
“Ah,” said Caina, guessing the reason.
Thronaris explained anyway. “As I’m sure you know, the High Queen commands her nobles to support charitable foundations and enterprises within their lands. Kardamnos Memorial is one of the best hospitals in the United States and has added immensely to my prestige.” His scowled deepened. “But if Baron Kaldmask of Brooklyn finds out about this…difficulty, then the first thing he will do is complain about it to both Duke Mythrender and the High Queen. And he’ll probably use it to make Duke Mythrender look bad as well. Kaldmask still thinks he should have been made the Duke of Manhattan.”
“I understand that Baron Kaldmask has…occasionally difficult relationships with his fellow nobles, my lord,” said Caina. There was an understatement. No one liked Kaldmask. Even the people of Brooklyn complained about him constantly to his overlord Duke Mythrender. As far as Caina knew, the only people, humans or Elves, who actually liked Kaldmask were the Eastern Orthodox refugees he had rescued from pogroms in the Neo-Ottoman Empire and resettled in Brooklyn.
“He’s an asshole,” muttered Thronaris. “God, I wish the Archons had gotten him.”
“My lord,” said Andromache before Thronaris could start up on the topic of Kaldmask, “perhaps we should show Miss Amalas our problem, so she can determine whether or not she can help us.”
“Yes, that is sound counsel,” said Thronaris. “Dr. Harper, please lead the way.”
Harper nodded and stepped towards the door, and Thronaris cast a spell. The vision of the valikarion saw the currents of magical power, and Thronaris wrapped himself in a Mask spell, disguising himself as a middle-aged human male in a lab coat. Caina blinked in surprise, and then unease went over her. Thronaris didn’t want anyone to know that he was here, and Andromache had been worried enough to ask for Caina’s help.
Whatever was going on had to be serious.
“This way, please,” said Dr. Harper, and they followed him from Andromache’s office, through the administration wing of the hospital, and then into the research wing. Harper unlocked an elevator door with his keycard, and the four of them filed inside. The Chief of Medicine hit the button for the basement, and both Andromache and Harper had to use their cards to unlock the elevator.
Caina wondered just where they were going.
The elevator doors hissed open, and they stepped into a concrete corridor illuminated with harsh lights. A locked door at the end read BIOHAZARD and EXTREME DANGER and AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
“Biohazard?” said Caina, and at the same time, she saw the magical auras beyond the doors.
Strange, distorted magical auras, like a tree blighted by fungus.
“Don’t worry,” and Andromache. “There’s no threat of infection. There’s not even any actual illness.”
“Dr. Harper has told the parents of the children in question that they have been infected with an extremely rare virus and need to be quarantined until it passes,” said Thronaris, his Mask spell dissolving into nothingness.
“Children?” said Caina. She liked this less and less.
“Simpler to show you,” said Andromache.
She unlocked the door and opened it, and they stepped into a room that looked like a maternity ward. It was clean and dimly lit, with a row of equipment along one wall. There were a dozen of those clear plastic cribs that hospitals used for newborns that kind of looked like incubators, and four nurses in blue scrubs kept an eye on the babies. Caina looked at the cribs and felt a dark spasm of emotion that she forced down. When she had been a child, she had dreamed of the day she would have children of her own, how she would be a better mother to them than her own mother had been.
Laeria Amalas and Maglarion had taken that from her.
But a dark realization came to Caina’s mind.
The distorted magical aura was coming from the newborns in the clear plastic cribs.
The nurses stopped and bowed when they saw Thronaris.
“Please,” said Thronaris, raising a hand, his voice solemn. “Continue your work.”
“Andromache,” said Caina. “What the hell is this?”
“See for yourself,” said Andromache, gesturing at one of the cribs.
Caina stepped to Andromache’s side and looked at the newborn. It looked like a healthy newborn child, perhaps no more than a few days old. The infant was wearing a diaper so Caina couldn’t tell if it was a boy or girl. She glanced at the chart attached to the bed and saw that the baby was named Joshua Isaacson. Boy, then. Joshua was sleeping, his arms and legs twitching, but then his eyes opened.
Caina’s chill got worse.
The baby’s eyes were black. Solid, unrelieved black, without iris, pupil, or whites. It was like looking into a bottomless pit.
“Hell,” said Caina in a quiet voice.
“I told you, my lord, that she would recognize it,” said Andromache to Thronaris.
“Then what is it?” said Harper, a hint of temper slipping into his voice. “You haven’t told anyone about…”
“It’s called a maelogaunt,” said Caina, looking at the doctor.
“What the hell is a maelogaunt?” said Harper.
“Creature from the Shadowlands,” said Caina, and Harper blinked. “You did your six years as a man-at-arms?”
“Yes,” said Harper. “And I have visited the Shadowlands while on campaign. I wish I could forget.”
“A maelogaunt is a rare creature from the Shadowlands,” said Caina. “The common ones, the anthrophages and the bloodrats and the like, prefer to eat human flesh. But some of the rarer ones dine on more…abstract concepts. Like memories, emotions. A maelogaunt is one of those. It can open rift ways, and it creeps into our world at night, when people are sleeping. Then it establishes a link with its victims, puts them into sort of a waking trance. Like sleepwalkers. It can feed on memories for years that way. But with infants…everything is new to them, so immediate. Brand new. Brand new memories are…are higher in calories, I guess.” Caina looked around the strange little ward. “God, all of them?”
Andromache nodded. “All of them.”
Harper frowned at her. “How do you know all that? Ms. Kardamnos said you were a security consultant.”
“A very specific kind of security consultant,” said Caina. “How long has this been going on?”
“It started four days ago,” said Harper. “I’d never seen anything like it, nor did the doctors and nurses in the maternity ward. Ms. Kardamnos thought the effect might be magical in origin, so she spoke to Baron Thronaris.”
“And you, Miss Amalas,” said Andromache, “are going to find and kill the maelogaunt for us.”
“Oh, I am, am I?” said Caina.
Andromache smiled. “We will pay you, of course. But you would do it for free. I know you, Caina. You could no more let something prey upon innocent children than you could cut off your right hand. And you are perfectly suited for dealing with this.”
She was right on both counts. Now that she knew what was happening, Caina could not turn her back on the problem. And she had the means to deal with it. She was a valikarion, bearer of a valikon, one of the magical swords wielded by the Elves on ancient Kalvarion. Many Shadowlands creatures were immune to bullets, but none of them were immune to the cold edge of her valikon. For that matter, no Elven warding spell, no matter how powerful, could stop a valikon. Most Elven nobles walked among mankind confident in the knowledge that only a few humans possessed weapons that could harm them. Caina wondered if Andromache had mentioned that fact to Thronaris.
Knowing Andromache, probably not.
But neither Andromache nor Thronaris knew that she was a shadow agent of the High Queen.
Caina’s right hand curled into a fist as she reached for the power of her blood ring.
“
Your Majesty,” she said inside her mind. “A maelogaunt is preying upon the children of Kardamnos Memorial Hospital. Andromache and Baron Thronaris want me to kill it quietly to avoid a scandal.”
The High Queen might respond immediately. She might respond in a day or two. It depended on how busy she was at the moment. Or, more precisely, how many different webs she was spinning at the same time.
Aloud, Caina said, “I will help you. And I’ll help you by giving you some good advice. This is way beyond me. You need better help than what I can offer. You need to call the Shadow Hunters, the Wizard’s Legion, maybe the Inquisition.”
“We cannot,” said Andromache, “for reasons that we have already explained. If we do, Baron Kaldmask will learn of it and damage the hospital.”
Caina scowled. “Then you’re playing games with the lives of these children. And any other children that are born here in the next few days.”
“As it happens, we are not,” said Harper, clearing his throat. “As I have said, we have put out the story that the children are infected by a highly contagious virus. We have told the parents and the media that we hope the newborns will be healthy soon enough, but out of an abundance of caution, all other maternity cases are being routed to different hospitals until the situation is resolved.”
“Then you’re lying to the public,” said Caina.
Andromache snorted. “The public is lied to every single day, Miss Amalas. You have participated in some of those lies. Or was the story in the press that my brother’s fiancée turned out to be a Rebel cell leader completely accurate?” Caina had no answer to that. “And your unique abilities make you ideally suited for dealing with the maelogaunt. You see, I may not like you, and you may not like me, but I know you. I am entirely confident that you can deal with this creature.”
Caina let out a sigh, and then the High Queen’s voice whispered inside her skull, the blood ring shivering against her finger.
“Oh, they do, do they?” said Tarlia. The High Queen seemed amused. “Very well. I have no other urgent tasks for you at the moment. Deal with their problem. It will be useful to hold it over their heads the next time I need something from Thronaris or Kardamnos. Be sure to charge Andromache for as much as you can squeeze out of her.”
The contact ended.
Well, that settled that, didn’t it?
“All right,” said Caina. “I’ll help, but on two conditions. One, if I kill this thing, I want a hundred and twenty thousand dollars.”
“Done,” said Andromache without hesitation, though Harper scowled.
“Two,” said Caina, “if my first attempt fails, I’m going to need to call in help. A maelogaunt can open rift ways from the Shadowlands, and it might retreat. If it does, I have to call in help. I’ll try to keep it quiet, but if I can’t….well, tough.” She gestured at the cribs. “Not with the children’s lives at stake.”
Andromache looked at Thronaris. “My lord?”
The Baron frowned at Caina, but he nodded. “These terms are acceptable.”
“I’ll be back at sundown,” said Caina.
***
Chapter 3: Night Hunting
Caina drove back to the branch office and went to sleep in her little apartment.
She was probably going to be awake all night so she would need the sleep.
At about noon, she got up, ran five kilometers on the treadmill, showered off, and got to work. Caina started with a call to the security director of Kardamnos Memorial Hospital. Since he was one of her employees, she got right through. Ghost Securities provided the security for the hospital, which was quite convenient. Caina explained that she would be keeping watch in the hospital’s maternity ward all night, and once the security director had warned her about the contagious virus, he agreed to post guards to keep anyone away from the maternity ward.
Caina didn’t want anyone getting between her and the maelogaunt. Some of the creatures of the Shadowlands only had the intelligence of animals. Wraithwolves, for instance, were more vicious and cunning than any animal on Earth, but they still had the instincts of predator animals. Bloodrats started out as animals, and if they lived long enough, they became sapient. Anthrophages grew smarter and more cunning the longer they lived.
Maelogaunts, though, were fiendishly clever. They were good at spinning illusions, at hiding in plain sight, at manipulating humans and Elves into fighting for them. If they were clever enough, they could lurk in a city for decades or even centuries, feeding on victims. Caina was surprised that this maelogaunt was bold enough to feed on a dozen infants at once. Surely it would realize that would draw attention. Perhaps the maelogaunt was a young one, or perhaps it was deranged.
Either way, Caina intended to end it.
The vision of the valikarion would see through its illusions, and its mind-altering magic could not touch her. Likely the maelogaunt had been visiting the maternity ward every night to seek out new victims. Caina would wait until it appeared, and then she would stroll up and stab the thing in the back with her valikon.
Simple and easy. The best kind of plan. But Caina knew something could go wrong.
After she showered, she stood in front of the bathroom mirror and summoned her valikon. The sword assembled itself out of shards of silver light and appeared in her hand, the Elven hieroglyphics carved into the blade giving off a harsh white glow. Caina’s valikon was a short, curved blade, and it had bonded to her the day she had become a valikarion, allowing her to summon it and dismiss it at will.
The price of finding it had been great pain, and she shuddered at the memory and dismissed the weapon.
She dressed in suitable clothes for the task at hand – black cargo pants, running shoes, a black T-shirt, and a loose black jacket. Beneath the jacket, she secured a holster containing a highly illegal stunner. It was possible the maelogaunt might be able to enspell people and command them to attack Caina, and she didn’t want to kill anyone. Into a backpack she loaded her night vision goggles and a few other things she might need, and then spent the afternoon in her office, dealing with the endless administrative matters of running a large private security company.
Come six PM, she braved the rush hour traffic again and made her way to Kardamnos Memorial Hospital. After the usual tense, crowded drive, she stashed her car in the parking ramp and headed into the hospital. The security guards were waiting for her, and they escorted her to the maternity wing. Caina left them with strict instructions that no one was to enter without her explicit permission.
With that, Caina took a few moments to explore the maternity wing.
Kardamnos Memorial Hospital had handled a lot of births, and there were over fifty rooms, with more for mothers who required longer-term care. Given the advanced state of modern medicine, honed by centuries of treating men-at-arms, the doctors had usually gotten the new mothers and their babies out the door after twenty-four hours, save for cases involving complications. There was a large nurses’ station, a half-dozen offices for the doctors and the chief nurses, a lab, and a nursey for the newborns.
Caina let herself into one of the offices, sat down, and waited.
She had done this kind of thing before many times, and she knew all the tactics to pass the time. Since there was no way she would miss the arrival of the maelogaunt, she started by pulling a paperback book by Malcolm Lock from her backpack and reading it. She had read most of his historical novels, and he had just come out with a new one. More romance in it than she would have expected. Maybe Mr. Lock had found a woman. Probably would cut into his writing time, though.
Every half hour Caina got up and did pushups, which helped keep her awake as the night wore on. Spending a night in an empty hospital ward wasn’t the strangest thing she had ever done. Admittedly, it wasn’t even the worst vigil she had ever kept. She could get up, move around, use the bathroom if necessary. She didn’t have to hide and remain motionless for hours on end, tensing and relaxing her muscles over and over to keep them from cramping.
&nb
sp; Just after midnight, her patience was rewarded.
She was sitting in the office with the door closed, on the last third of the Malcolm Lock book. The vision of the valikarion was not hindered by material walls, and theoretically, Caina could see for thousands of miles with it. Practically, she had an intense attack of vertigo if she looked too far for too long, and she doubted Andromache would be impressed if Caina threw up all over some poor doctor’s desk.
But she hardly needed to strain herself. The surge of magic had appeared only a few dozen yards away, and it was the familiar gray glow of a rift way spell. A rift way had opened in the maternity ward, and Caina was reasonably sure it had appeared in the staff kitchen.
She rose to her feet in silence and eased open the door, her right hand flexing.
The office hallway was deserted. As it happened, her night vision goggles had been unnecessary. Emergency lights gave off a gentle glow from the walls every few yards, and Caina had no trouble making her way forward. She came to the end of the hallway and to the reception desk, which gave her a good view of the waiting room, which was done in gentle pastel colors, no doubt to sooth the nerves of expectant mothers and fathers. From here she could see the door to the staff lounge and kitchen while remaining unseen herself.
The door to the lounge swung open, and the maelogaunt stepped into the waiting room.
A multitude of conflicting images came to Caina’s sight, both her physical eyes and the vision of the valikarion. The maelogaunt had wrapped itself in an illusion that made it look like a cheerful, slightly paunchy middle-aged janitor. That was clever – no one paid much attention to janitors, a fact that Caina herself had exploited many times. Caina’s valikarion senses saw the sheath of magical power that surrounded the maelogaunt, that powered the Mask spell to give it the appearance of a normal human.
And because Caina was a valikarion, she simultaneously saw the illusion and the reality beneath.
The hideous, misshapen reality.
Cloak & Ghost: Lost Gate Page 4