I shoved those thoughts out of my head. Partly because I knew they were irrational. Partly because I needed to focus on the business at hand. And partly because no doubt Caina would deduce the entire thing from the movement of my hand or something.
“Right to the point, then?” said Caina. “All right. There is a Shadowlands creature preying upon newborns in Kardamnos Memorial Hospital, and I think I’m going to need your help to stop it.”
I frowned. “If something killed a bunch of newborns at the hospital, you’re going to need more serious help.”
Caina shook her head. “The newborns are still alive.”
“What kind of Shadowlands attacks newborns and leaves them alive?” I said. “A wraithwolf would go through a group of babies like they were chicken nuggets.”
“Cognophage?” said Riordan.
“No, worse,” said Caina. “Maelogaunt.”
Riordan let out a breath. I said a bad word that gets censored a lot.
“You’ve heard of them, I see,” said Caina.
“I’m afraid so,” said Riordan. “I’ve encountered them before in my line of work.”
“Which is an operative of the Family of the Shadow Hunters,” said Caina, voice quiet.
Riordan frowned, took off his sunglasses. “How did you know that?”
“Told you,” I said. “Watch this. She’s going to do this thing where she looks at you and deduces all kinds of secrets about you.” I pointed at her. “Caina, go.”
She sighed and rolled her eyes. I grinned at her and took a sip of coffee.
“Nadia told you about me, so I assume you know I’m a valikarion,” said Caina. “I can see your aura, which combined with the fact that you scanned the room and took a seat where you can watch all the exits and entrances, implies that you belonged to the Wizard’s Legion at some point in your life. Not a hard deduction, admittedly. But I can see the…mark the Shadowmorph leaves on your aura, so that means you’re a Shadow Hunter. Also the heavy sunglasses, which you need to wear on sunny days because the Shadowmorph makes all your senses sharper. You’ve got a gun in a shoulder holster under your jacket, probably a .38.”
“.45,” said Riordan.
“Those are always hard to tell underneath a coat,” said Caina. She grimaced. “And…I am sorry that your previous relationships ended in tragedy.”
I gave Riordan a startled look, but his expression didn’t change.
“And just how did you know that?” he said.
“If I didn’t know you were married,” said Caina, “I would have thought you were Nadia’s bodyguard, not her husband.” She hesitated, and something flickered in those cold blue eyes. “And…I understand. Better than you might think. I am sorry for your loss.”
I remembered what Caina had told me, how she and Dr. Claudia Dorius’s brother had been close, but he had died saving her life.
“Thank you,” said Riordan. “But we should focus on the present. Tell me about the maelogaunt.”
“What do you know about them?” said Caina.
“Not all that much,” I said. “I never encountered one in…” I started to say the words Eternity Crucible, but I stopped myself. “In the Shadowlands.”
“I have,” said Riordan. “They’re a nasty combination of chameleon and trapdoor spider.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“They eat memories,” said Riordan. “Cognophages do that, too, but maelogaunts are more insidious about it. They rule small domains inside the Shadowlands, use them as lairs. They take the memories, store them in their domain, and eat them at their convenience.”
“Like a spider trapping a bunch of flies into its web,” I said. "It can snack on them later.”
“Exactly,” said Caina.
“They can also cast spells,” said Riordan. “They’re extremely skilled with illusion and mind magic. All of them can use the Mask spell, and some of them can even Cloak.”
“Great,” I said. “But something doesn’t make sense. You said it eats memories, right?”
Riordan nodded. “Shadowlands creatures can sometimes subsist on forces and concepts that seem abstract to humans.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but why prey on a bunch of babies? They’re babies. They don’t have a lot of memories yet.”
“I think it formed a link with each of the newborns,” said Caina, “and it’s harvesting the memories as they are formed. Newborns don’t have much in the way of memory, but everything is vivid and intense to them. The maelogaunt must derive more in the way of nourishment from those memories.”
“So it turned the newborns into…a farm, or a cattle pen, something like that,” I said.
Caina nodded. “I believe that is correct.”
“I’ve never heard of a maelogaunt doing anything like that,” said Riordan. “They usually attack adults, people at least in their thirties. More memories to eat. And I’ve never heard of one doing anything so systematic. They’re usually more opportunistic.”
“The maelogaunt might not be the brains behind the attacks,” said Caina. “I confronted it last night.”
“Wasn’t that risky?” I said.
“I say confronted,” said Caina. “I ambushed it. I waited in the hospital’s maternity ward, and tried to stab it in the back.”
Riordan grunted. “Sensible.”
“But I could see a binding spell upon it,” said Caina. “Someone summoned it and bound it. Just as I was about to attack it, someone sent a command through the binding spell, and it turned around.” Caina shook her head. “Even if I had killed it, I don’t think it would have mattered. Whoever summoned it would have just found and summoned another one.”
“Who would summon a maelogaunt and set it to attack a maternity wing?” said Riordan.
“Good question,” said Caina.
“Any leftover Rebels?” I said. “Nicholas Connor wouldn’t have had any qualms about attacking a hospital.”
“No,” said Riordan. “But Connor would have been more likely to bomb the hospital. Any Rebel wizards with the skill to open rift ways were either killed in Venomhold or are in hiding. I don’t think the survivors would try something like this and risk drawing attention to themselves.”
“Unless it has some purpose we don’t yet see,” said Caina.
“That’s a very good point,” said Riordan.
“An Archon, maybe?” I said. “But that doesn’t seem right, does it? Why would an Archon care about human babies? Wait!” I snapped my fingers.
Both Riordan and Caina looked at me.
“We’re asking the wrong question,” I said. “Or we’re asking the right questions in the wrong order. See, it doesn’t matter why the summoner is doing this, not yet, anyway. What matters is who the summoner is. If we find the summoner, we can beat the answers out of him.”
“If I knew who the summoner was,” said Caina in a dry voice, “I would be beating the answers out of him right now, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“Ah, but when the maelogaunt turns up again,” I said, “you can use the vision of the valikarion to track the binding spell back to the wizard who cast it, right?”
Caina shook her head. “The vision of the valikarion only lets me see active spells. If we tried that, we would need to hold the maelogaunt captive long enough to follow the trail back to the summoner.”
I smiled, took a sip of coffee, and leaned back in my chair. “Or we could kill it, and I could follow the resonance of the broken spell back to its caster.”
“That would be helpful if you could do that,” said Caina.
“Since I have an aetherometer,” I said, “I can do just that.”
Caina blinked. “You didn’t have an aetherometer with you the last time.”
I shrugged. “I didn’t think I’d need it. I didn’t know Sulzer was involved in anything magical until those undead attacked us behind the bar. And you saw that dress I wore when we broke into his workroom. An aetherometer’s a little conspicuous. Whe
re would I have hidden it in that dress?”
“I liked that dress,” murmured Riordan.
I squeezed his knee underneath the table. I kind of wanted to squeeze something else, but that was inappropriate for a public place. We’d save that for later.
“Where did you get an aetherometer?” said Caina.
“Wedding present from the High Queen.”
“Huh,” said Caina. “But, yes. An aetherometer would be perfect. We’d just need to focus the instrument on the maelogaunt, and then we could follow the controlling spell back to its source. If we find the summoner, this whole problem could be cleared up tonight.”
“You expect the maelogaunt to be back?” said Riordan.
Caina nodded. “Probably tonight. If it keeps to its pattern, it will turn up in the maternity ward, and we’ll have it.” She hesitated. “Assuming, of course, you are willing to help me.”
I shared a look with Riordan. He inclined his head.
“All right, we’re in,” I said. “We’ll still want half of your fee, though.”
“Fair enough,” said Caina. “Meet me at the loading dock of Kardamnos Memorial Hospital at 6 PM tonight. I’ll have security let us through, and we’ll get set up in the maternity ward. Bring whatever equipment you might need.” She frowned. “If you think you’ll need guns, I can get them through security, but…”
“We'll just bring pistols,” said Riordan. “Bullets won’t work on the maelogaunt. But if the summoner is human, three guns in his face might persuade him to cooperate.”
“All right,” said Caina. She finished off her coffee. “6 PM it is. I’ll need to get some things ready.” She got to her feet. “Thank you for this, both of you.”
“Don’t thank us yet,” I said, and Caina left.
Riordan and I finished our coffee, and a few minutes later we were in his SUV, heading back to his condo. He drove. I always drove myself everywhere, but when we were together, I defaulted to letting him drive. It was kind of pleasant to sit back and watch the city go by.
I tried not to remember the fighting I had seen on the streets of Manhattan.
“What did you think of her?” I said.
“Interesting woman,” said Riordan.
I frowned. “Interesting? Like, ‘Fascinating, Holmes’ kind of interesting, or you’d-like-to-sleep-with-her kind of interesting?”
“Didn’t I tell you?” said Riordan. “We knew each other a few years ago, and we had a couple of nights where…”
I sat bolt upright. “You’re joking. Tell me you’re joking.”
He took his eyes from the road just long enough to smile at me. “I’m joking. And married. No, I never met her before today.”
“Oh,” I said, subsiding. I suppose I had deserved that for demanding to know if he found her attractive. “But what did you mean by interesting?”
“She reminds me a little of you,” said Riordan. “Almost like you were characters created by the same author.”
“For God’s sake,” I muttered. “Not everything has to be compared to a damn book.” He smiled again. “And any author who could think up someone like me would be a serious jerk.”
“I happen to like books. Anyway. No, you and Caina are nothing alike,” said Riordan. “Except that you both have unique abilities gained through great pain. I’m not sure what happened to her, how she became a valikarion, but I bet it wasn’t pleasant.”
I remembered the scar I had seen on her belly when she had been changing clothes.
“Yeah,” I said. “I bet it wasn’t.”
The Eternity Crucible flickered through my thoughts.
I doubt what had happened to her had been as unpleasant as what had happened to me.
The thought made me feel ridiculous. Suffering wasn’t a competition. It wasn’t like you got points for it.
Though if you did, I would totally win.
I rolled my eyes.
“What?” said Riordan.
“I’m just exasperated with myself,” I said. “You really think we can do this? Find whoever summoned that maelogaunt?”
“We have a good chance of it,” said Riordan. “We have your aetherometer. We have Caina’s valikon. And my Shadowmorph blade wouldn’t be as effective as her valikon against a Shadowlands creature, but it would be effective enough. We’ve got a good plan.”
“A good plan,” I said. That wasn’t comforting. I had seen enough of war to know that plans sometimes went right to hell.
But he was right. We were well-equipped to deal with this kind of problem. And the thought of some creature from the Shadowlands preying on a bunch of newborns…yeah, that pissed me off.
Thanks to my magic, I had all kinds of ways to make my displeasure known.
We got home about half an hour later, and Riordan closed the front door behind us.
“Okay,” I said, kicking off my boots and putting them by the door. “We’ve got about five hours to get ready. Why…”
Riordan took my shoulders, gently turned me around, and kissed me long and hard.
“That was nice,” I said when we broke apart, my voice a little unsteady. “But shouldn’t…shouldn’t we get ready…”
“There is one thing we can do first to get ready,” murmured Riordan. “Clears the mind. Calms the nerves. Steadies the hand.”
I laughed. “Seriously?”
In answer, he grasped the hem of my dress and pulled it up. He did it fast enough that I kind of had no choice but to raise my arms over my head and go along with it. The dress slid over my head, and he tossed it onto the couch.
“You’re just making that up,” I said. “That thing about steadying the hands.”
“I am not,” he said. He unhooked my bra and sent it to join the dress.
“Oh, yeah?” I said, and he began to roll my leggings down my hips. “Prove it.”
He did. I don’t know if he was right or not, but damn if it wasn’t an enjoyable experiment.
***
Chapter 6: Lost Choices
A little before quarter to six, Caina parked next to the physical plant of Kardamnos Memorial Hospital and got out of her car.
She didn’t know what the night would bring, so she had come prepared. She had dressed in black cargo pants, black running shoes, a black T-shirt, and a tactical harness. Gloves protected her hands, goggles had been pushed up over her hair, and a breath mask hung from a cord around her neck. A backpack held all the usual gear she had brought last night. To the backpack she added a loaded .38 Royal Arms pistol, a bunch of extra ammunition, and a sheathed sword of the sort carried by men-at-arms into the Shadowlands.
Caina always had her valikon, of course, but she had learned long ago that there was no such thing as too much firepower in this kind of situation.
Kardamnos Memorial Hospital was a sprawling complex, and the loading dock was large enough to accomodate the hospital's needs. There were a dozen ports for semis, and even as she approached, two more trucks backed up to the dock doors. There was a pedestrian entrance next to the loading dock, and Caina walked up to it. A middle-aged man wearing the uniform of Ghost Securities waited at the door and straightened up as she approached.
“Ma’am,” said the man. His nametag read PHILIPS, and he was the night security supervisor for Kardamnos Memorial Hospital.
“Any trouble?” said Caina.
Philips shook his head. “Just the usual. Some domestic battery cases in the ER, someone out of his mind on synthetic drugs. Called Homeland Security to deal with them, and everything’s under control. Things are set up at the maternity ward, ma’am. We won’t let anyone else in or out until morning.”
“Good,” said Caina. “Two other people are coming after me. A man named Riordan, and a woman named Nadia. They’re going to come to this door. Once they do, send them to the maternity ward, will you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Philips. “We’ve had to call in double shifts tonight.”
Caina frowned. “Why?” Had word of the maelogaunt attac
k leaked out?
“No, there’s a fundraiser,” said Philips. “Some fancy thing with the chairwoman of the board, and…”
Even as he spoke, Caina heard the click of a high heel against concrete.
She looked through the pedestrian door and into the loading dock. It was a cavernous space, half-filled with pallets, and a score of burly men worked to unload the trucks and sort the arriving supplies. All of them took great care to avoid looking at Andromache Kardamnos, who stood near the door to the employee lounge. She was wearing a red evening dress with a flowing skirt that left her arms bare, and Caina had to admit she looked attractive in a regal sort of way. Next to her stood Winston Ravenwood the Ninth, wearing an expensive double-breasted suit. He had the sort of complexion that burned in the sun after above five seconds, with fine-boned features, pale blond hair, and shrewd blue eyes. He looked like he should have been standing on the prow of a million-dollar yacht with a white sweater tied around his waist.
“Uh oh,” said Philips under his breath.
“Yeah,” said Caina. “Excuse me.”
She took a deep breath and went to where Andromache and Winston awaited her.
“Well?” said Andromache.
Caina started to answer, but Winston spoke first.
“Darling, let’s not be rude,” he said, his upper-class New York accent pronounced. He held out his right hand, and Caina shook it. “It’s good to see you again, Director Amalas.”
“Thank you, Mr. Ravenwood,” said Caina.
“Andi tells me you’re helping out the hospital with some sort of, er, Shadowlands creature,” said Winston.
Cloak & Ghost: Lost Gate Page 7