“What is it? I buy IT stuff I underst…oh…if this is like a Trojan horse and the victims are like a BotNet, then every time…” Julian said.
Kelly interrupted him midsentence. “Every time it infects somebody, it gets stronger, and when it finally launches its Denial of Service Attack, what’s going to happen?” Beyond that, Kelly also knew it was almost universally true that if a hacker played with malware they didn’t understand, they almost inevitably ended up infected themselves. She thought of the way that she and the other partners had been acting. Her promiscuity, Ena’s hunger, Tara’s rage. All simple, base emotions. Was the thing taking their memories as payment, or was it just filling up their brains with more copies of its own programming?
She must have been frozen for some time because Julian spoke again. “I think it’s a good analogy. Parts of it feel right, but I don’t think that that’s the whole story. I’ve been to its lair; I’ve seen where it takes its victims, and it’s nothing like the inside of a computer. It’s not just replicating or infecting, but it’s clear that somehow it’s feeding. It’s feeding, and I think it’s cleaned out the entire buffet before.”
Kelly felt her eyes open and her nostrils flare at that statement. It didn’t seem possible that she could be involved in something that could cause even as much trouble as it already had, but if what Julian was saying was right…her hands were trembling, and she broke out in a cold sweat at the implication.
“Mr. Adler, I’ve put down everything that I know that might be pertinent on these sheets. I want to help any way that I can, and I feel like somehow you might be the only one that can take care of this, but I don’t really understand who you are, except that you seem to have some connection or insight to this thing.” Kelly looked at the sweaty man standing across from her and noticed a quaver in his knees and shallowness to his breathing, and she realized that he was barely managing to stay on his feet. She took him in again, and really saw for the first time the bruises on his neck and face, the scraped knuckles, the smashed fingers. Was this the man that she hoped could somehow save her?
The Irishwoman saw him close his eyes in thought, and then he slowly, painfully straightened his back, rolled his shoulders and looked straight into her eyes. “I used to call myself a Dreamwatcher, but I think that the time for watching is over.”
Maybe he wasn’t the man who could save her, Kelly thought. But just maybe he was the man who could redeem her. That’s when the bomb when off.
CHAPTER 37 1200–1500, Tuesday, August 4, 2015
***Julian***
“I used to call myself a Dreamwatcher, but I think that the time for watching is over.” I’d meant it as a joke. The line was pure cheese but hey—I’m from Wisconsin, we know cheese, and the Irish broad was eating it up. I was on the raw edge of physical collapse and puffing myself up had made my head spin a bit. I saw a chair next to the kitchen table that wouldn’t bring me too close to Kelly while I started to give her at least the bare bones details of what being a Dreamwatcher meant. I’d spent my whole life hiding the secret of my nightly adventures, but now I found myself getting ready to spill it all again for the third time in the last few days. At this rate, I might as well just write a book.
I managed to take one step toward the chair before the explosion hit.
The windows rattled, and Kelly let out a small yip of surprise and hopped to her feet. My contrary body decided that it was required to make the opposite play; I stumbled and went to my knees but managed to grab the back of the chair before I fell flat on my face.
I looked over to the lithe woman on the other side of the room and said: “Our mutual friend has something against me, and I get the feeling that it doesn’t like the idea of us conspiring together like this. I don’t know exactly how busy you were at OMG, but when I was…wherever I was last night…I saw a lot of people snared by this thing. If it has some kind of control over all of them, I’m betting that explosion is no coincidence.” I struggled back to my feet and pulled out my phone without waiting for Kelly’s reply. I pounded out a quick text message to Dana, telling her that we were on our way. I’d let her down too many times in the last few weeks, and if there was a chance that I was going into danger again, I was going to let her know and tell her that I loved her. Sirens began to wail, and I heard a shout go up from Shepherd’s Bush Green.
Kelly hadn’t wasted any time while I was texting but had dashed into the bedroom and grabbed a small overnight bag that she had acquired in the last twenty-four hours. She ran to a window and looked out.
“I agree that it probably doesn’t ‘like’ us being so close together, for whatever value of like that thing has. However, I don’t think that it could arrange a bombing. This flat is in the company’s name, and Derrick could have followed us easily,” Kelly said. Her words struck a chord. I’d been angry leaving the court—it seemed I spent a lot of time angry lately—and it looked like this time it was going to come back to haunt me.
I’d seen the Redderton detective in the crowd, and then he’d managed to slip away. If I had been thinking straight, I’d have made sure that we weren’t followed. I was no professional in terms of cloak and dagger, but I had a PhD in paranoia. Instead of keeping tabs on Redderton, I was in a strange apartment with bombs exploding outside and what sounded like a riot kicking off. The idea of the creature leading some kind of army still niggled at me, but it was good to remember that nonsupernatural threats could be dangerous too.
We hurried out of the apartment, choosing to go down the stairs as we couldn’t risk getting stuck in an elevator if the explosion had done any damage to the local grid. I gripped the railing with desperate strength as I pounded down the steps, on shaking legs, so quickly that I’m almost sure that we could have passed an eighty-year-old man…if he happened to have gout. We finally emerged after about five minutes, sweating and winded, from the air-conditioned lobby into another sweltering hot day. However, for the first time in weeks, there seemed to be the potential for a break in the weather, as dark storm clouds were building on the edge of the western horizon. The meticulously written statement for Superintendent Singh that Kelly had spent hours writing was still sitting on the kitchen table.
Since the 2011 London riots had kicked off following the controversial shooting death of Mark Duggan, the police had drilled relentlessly on crowd control. Even with the budget cuts from the credit crunch continuing to bite deep into their resources, it had been a top priority to make sure that there was no repeat of the breakdown in authority that had occurred then.
There’s a Metropolitan Police station at Shepherd’s Bush, and thanks to the massive Westfield Shopping Centre and its accompanying investment, the area had been slowly transforming. Ten years before, the center had been on the vibrant and informal trading in the Market, music at the Empire, and relaxing on the green or at the Walkabout, but now it was all about shopping, so people had to feel safe. Therefore, it was no great surprise when less than a dozen minutes after the first explosion, there was already a thin line of riot-gear-clad policemen assembling at the western end of the Green. What was a surprise was the crowd that they were facing off against.
Kelly and I didn’t stay to gawp, but a quick survey of the situation showed that the angry crowd was made up of a cross section of society: mothers with buggies, businessmen in suits, and the elderly with canes were just as prevalent as yoofs in football jerseys. It looked like the explosion had come from a trash bin on the eastern end of the Green, but instead of people scattering in every direction, the explosion had been like a match to paper; the entire crowd was screaming and throwing whatever they happened to have to hand at the officers. The apartment was a little over a hundred yards away from the nearest point of the police line, but I’d been “kettled” and held for hours once before during, of all things, a badger cull protest. We didn’t have time for that crap.
“Kelly, let’s cut down to the Uxbridge Road. We should be able to get a cab or a bus out of here if we’re quick
,” I said. She bobbed her head in acquiescence, and we vamoosed. It took us the best part of two hours to get from the Bush to the stop in Greenford, and the disturbances forced us to change buses three times. Most of the journey was spent on the top deck of a 207, and I thanked the Mayor, Boris Johnson, mentally once again for phasing out the bendy buses. While waiting, Kelly filled me in on several details that hadn’t made sense until now.
“We’ve used Redderton’s agency for years to do background checks on employees and look into any potential deals. If you didn’t know, they’re one of Britain’s oldest and most trusted agencies. We’d rather spend some cash instead of paying the price to it for any deals where there might be time wasters involved.” Her cheeks blushed at this, and her voice cracked with emotion. Even though I still felt contempt toward her for her part in OMG’s mistakes, it looked like she truly did feel bad about what she had done. Considering what I’d accidentally brought about at the hospital, perhaps it was a bit hypocritical for me to judge her. Perhaps my softening attitude also had something to do with the delicate white fingers creeping up my inseam.
“That’s very interesting, Kelly, but could you get your hand off my leg?” I said. She blushed brighter and snatched her hand back with a throaty laugh. We’d tried to minimize the amount of time that we spent in close proximity, but anyone who has been a guest of Transport for London knows that isn’t likely to be a winning proposition on a cramped bus.
She took a deep breath before continuing: “Tara originally brought them on board, but Ena has been dealing with them more often lately. The one that's been hounding us is a junior partner named Derrick Redderton, who handles our account. He’s from the founding family, but I get the feeling that he’s not on the shortlist to move up any time soon. As you might have noticed, he’s a bit of a brawler and not much of a thinker.”
It was good to be able to put a name to the man’s face. His blunt-nosed, ugly, leathery face. Yeah, I’m a bit childish. But he started it.
“Is there anything that I can do for my colleagues? Is there really no way to call this thing off?” I asked. I didn’t call Richard and Janice friends because that wouldn’t be true, but no one deserved to suffer in the way that I’d witnessed in that strange dream place. Kelly looked at me like I was on the short bus instead of a double-decker. I unconsciously hunched my shoulders at the implied insult, instantly regretting it as a stab of pain made me gasp. The infection on my back started to throb in time with my heartbeat. At least it would help me stay awake. Always look on the bright side of life.
“If there was any way to remove the mark, don’t you think I’d have done it? I don’t think that it’s really a physical thing. The ink that we use has silver flakes in it from a thick set of silver chains that we use in the summoning. I looked this stuff up once, and it’s called ‘thaumaturgy.’ Like calling to like,” she explained. I noticed that Kelly’s accent got thicker as she became more worked up, and I wondered if the other, more polished, partners would have slipped up that way. I doubted it. She continued, “Anyhow, the best thing that you can do for your friends is to make sure that the deal doesn’t go through. Whatever else it does, this thing does carry out its instructions when given correctly. Therefore, if it’s been told to make sure that this deal goes through, it will do so before it breaks them too badly to function.”
After we got off the bus, I used the short walk home to put in a call. “Nick, it’s Julian here. Can you talk?” I outlined within a couple of minutes a real cock-and-bull story about the OMG partners being mixed up in a conspiracy, tossing in some baloney about hired gangsters who were supposed to take out the bid team after the contract was signed. Between what he’d heard on the conference call yesterday, the company rumor mill, and my story, I had Nick promising to do everything that he could to slow down the procurement and thanking me for the opportunity. I really was good at my job. And humble.
Before I put the phone down, a text reply finally came in from Dana, which caused me to stop in my tracks…because I’d walked past our destination.
R U ok? I M at church w/Ft O still. Txt soon. Luv U.
I didn’t bother replying, instead motioning for Kelly to turn around. She was walking about ten paces behind me, but now she led the way as I told her to head into the church. As I said, I didn’t bother replying to Dana’s text, but maybe I should have, because the words that greeted me as I walked through the door had no business being said anywhere that a child could hear, let alone in a church.
“What the hell is she doing here?” Dana yelled (which wasn’t exactly what was said). Father O. visibly winced at the profanity, and it was incongruous to see his discomfort with mere words when I knew that he’d faced down mind-devouring pubic hair demons. Kelly flinched at the accusation but then recovered and strutted forward, red hair trailing behind and chest pushed out. Not that I noticed that kind of thing.
“I’m here because your husband asked me to come,” Kelly said, glaring at my wife. Dana ground her teeth at the other woman’s choice of words and glared back, nostrils flaring. My reassurances last night clearly hadn’t put to rest all of her suspicions, as tension flashed in the air between them. Comparing the two women up close was no contest. Kelly was younger, bustier, and slimmer than my wife. Dana was the mother of my child and the smartest woman I’d ever met. I’d choose Dana every time. Ten seconds passed soundlessly.
Eventually, Kelly blinked first and flounced across the church to a pew in the front row. She turned her back on us, fiddling with her mobile. I walked to Dana and took her in my arms. She was stiff at first, but I pushed in and whispered into her ear: “She’s in trouble, and she might have information that we need. I take it from your reaction that you still…”
Dana interrupted me smoothly: “I’ve been worried about your late nights for months, and then I get a picture of you having coffee with her? I know what you said last night, but it’s going to take some time for me to deal with it.” She paused before stepping out of my embrace and looked at me levelly. Father O. took the opportunity to wander away toward Kelly before Dana continued, “Even if there wasn’t…anything going on between you, she’s still partially responsible for everything that’s been happening, and there’s more going on here than I think you even realized.”
I quirked an eyebrow, and she began to explain. Dana had spent the entire day at the church with Father O., researching everything that might be related to the current situation while the priest spent hours on the phone making calls to his contacts. Each one of them had turned up information that only added to the complexity of the case. Dana had always been an excellent researcher, and she’d discovered that there had been half a dozen different crimes committed by former OMG clients in the past twenty-four hours. Each suspect had been released on bail, even though the charges brought against them usually required pretrial detention. The priest had almost exactly the opposite confirmation from his sources, who informed him that besides the disturbances in and around London, there was nothing going on.
“I think your information confirms a theory that Kelly and I were working on,” I said and kicked myself as Dana’s mouth tightened, but she motioned for me to carry on. “We think that this thing is reaching some kind of critical mass of infections, and as it gets closer and closer to that point, it can exert more influence. I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that every incident in the past few days has been followed up by some kind of riot,” I said. My wife nodded her head, and I felt a pang of regret as I noticed the dark circles, bloodshot eyes, and other signs of worry and stress that I’d carved on her face in the last few days.
“I hadn’t put that together…” She paused for nearly a minute, but I didn’t rush her, and eventually she shook her head and snapped out of whatever line of mental investigation she’d been running down. “I wasn’t done telling you everything that we found out today. Within about an hour this morning, Father O. and I got sick of calling it ‘the creature’ or ‘the monster,’ so
he looked through some old books while I scoured the net. I think we know what it is,” Dana said.
I’d spent so many years hunting down people’s worst nightmares that unless it was something obvious like a vampire or a zombie, I usually just lumped them into a category like “angry boyfriend” or “chasing toothy thing” and moved on. Maybe it was weird that I hadn’t named the shadow creature yet. I’ve named people that I see two or three days in a row on the train: goat-boy and kebab-lady, I’m looking at you.
“Ground patrol to Major Tom? This is the part where you’re supposed to say, ‘Dana, that’s amazing! Tell me what you found,’” she said, waving her hands in front of my face, a note of exasperation creeping into her voice.
“Dana, that’s amazing. Please, please tell me what you’ve found, you beautiful, clever, and astounding woman.”
She smirked a little, nodded, and made her pronouncement.
“Julian—you’ve been fighting a puca.”
CHAPTER 38 1500 –1845, Tuesday, August 4, 2015
***Julian***
Did it count as fighting if I just got my ass kicked all the time? I thought. What I actually said was, “I’m fighting Garfield’s teddy bear?” My wife tried to stifle a laugh, but it came out as a snort that echoed in the church. Father O. and Kelly turned to look. Dana blushed.
“No, a puca. P-U-C-A. We figured that all of the OMG women were Irish, so we started by looking through one of Father’s books on Celtic folklore. You mentioned several times that it had horselike features, but also that it was all black with red eyes,” Dana said.
“Doesn’t that point to something like a nightmare? I think that there was something like that in a comic I read,” I replied.
She shook her head. “No, turns out that a nightmare is something totally different; the mare bit of the name comes from old English and refers to a kind of a dream goblin and not a female horse. We really thought that it might be that as well, but between the shape changing and its ability to show up during the day, we don’t think that’s right,” Dana said.
Dream Job (The Dreamwalker Chronicles Book 1) Page 23