Siege Perilous

by Nigel Bennett

  When Charon opened his eyes, the old man was facedown on the polished floor, blood flowing from his nose and ears, hands clenched, lips drawn back in a rictus of pain. People were just beginning to notice his collapse. A short man in baggy tourist clothes responded to a call for a doctor and pushed his way through. People in uniforms closed in.

  Too late, but you can't say I didn't warn the old coot.

  Had anyone else seen the fight? That woman who'd heard the parasite's scream . . . no, she was doing the onlooker thing with the rest of the crowd. Okay, she gets to live another day. Who else?

  There. Charon spotted another native man farther along the terminal. Probably the old guy's acolyte. He was much younger, on this Side and the next, and clearly scared. He backed off, turned, and shot out the terminal's glass doors. He'd probably go back to his little grass shack in the back of wherever and mutter chants and burn his herbs and try to figure out what the hell was going on. Fat lot of good it'd do him and the rest of his tribe. Their great scaled protector just wasn't around no more, and manomano, hadn't it felt good to take in its energy?

  Charon flexed his perfectly healed arm. The ache of the break was quite gone. God, but it was great to be free of that pain. For a cure-all there was just nothing to beat the power of a deity's blood. Even his scars had vanished. Jeeze, he'd had some of those old sword and knife cuts from his salad days as a human for so long he'd forgotten how they'd got there. The new skin was fresh and tight, the muscles under it strong.

  For now.

  The energy rush would soon fade. He could feel it going even now.

  Maybe he should have hauled wormy back for a little bloodbath like Siegfried once did with his dragon and hit the reset button on the whole bod. That might have made a huge difference. But it had all happened so fast, and Kukulcan had been a pretty determined fighter, one couldn't think of everything given those circs. Grand Old Snaky had resisted, then gone for the girl. Charon would have squandered all the power he'd gained getting the monster to come to heel, then been too weak for a sanguinary sauna.

  The gains were still pretty good, though. Look on the bright side. With both eyes. He had stereo vision back, woo-hoo. Charon wanted to shed the now superfluous eye patch, but then he wouldn't match his passport photo. Have to keep up the charade a little longer. Besides, the black patch looked good with the restored color of his beard and hair, positively rakish. Check out the hot pirate, ladies. Anyone ready to walk my plank?

  To his surprise it was daylight already. Man, the Otherside skirmish with the warrior-priest must have gone on longer than he'd thought. Time was such a trip over there. In some places you could stop off for a snack with the locals and emerge twenty years later to everyone else's astonishment. What a handy way to outlive relatives.

  The trickle of people coming in for flights increased. Soon it'd be a flood. Charon picked up his flight bag and went through check-in. He produced his expensive paperwork, answered their ridiculous security questions without fuss, and had a few sticky minutes when the clerk commented that he looked too young for his picture ID. Charon grinned, pretending to take it as a compliment, and credited his vacation as being responsible for the rejuvenation. No need to burden anyone with talk about the specific use he'd made of the power taken in from atop El Castillo and the rest of the area.

  Happily, no one was overly concerned with the good-humored tourista, and he was cleared through for boarding.

  The next hitch wouldn't be until he hit customs on arrival and have to explain his collection of prescriptions. The damned things seemed to take up half the space in his flight bag . . . and the cost? Through the roof and into orbit. Hell, buying a gun to end the problem would be so much cheaper.

  But he wanted to live.

  Not an option so far as his body was concerned. Since that mess with the Grail a couple years ago things had been gradually deteriorating. Way back when, at the beginning, when he had his rebirth in blood, men didn't live all that long. He'd been camping on the outside borders of what was then old age, and once turned human again it became just a matter of time before his genetics caught up with him.

  The first thing he tried to stave it off was getting himself vamped again. Not a lot of the fang-gang crowd around, and they were good at blending, but he had old friends to look up.

  Friends. That was a laugh. Okay, enemies he'd not gotten around to snuffing yet. It was a little tricky trapping one of them, but he'd done it, then starved her into performing a blood-swap, which should have been an end to it.

  That had not gone well. For one thing it hadn't worked. She'd drained him white, and he returned the favor when it was his turn to drink . . . and waited . . . and waited . . .

  . . . and it hadn't fucking worked.

  After some thought, and the very careful disposal of her headless body so she couldn't come after him later, he decided that perhaps one from his own dark bloodline was needed. He'd made a few rare offspring over the centuries, and they'd early on learned that Daddy Was Not Nice and disappeared themselves, but he knew where to dig. He turned one of them up in Denmark of all places and tried again.

  A no go. And another corpse to lose. What was this, a conspiracy?

  Or that damned Grail.

  Or the whole Vampire Thing being a once-only opportunity. If you were dumb enough to get "cured" you couldn't acquire it again.

  Immunity sucked.

  Particularly immunity to the one thing that had always kept him alive and healthy.

  He'd gone in for a checkup to see about a minor but chronic exhaustion that began to plague him and learned about the bomb ticking in his system.

  Make that growing. Out of control. Fast. As though it had a grudge on.

  The doctor and the others he'd consulted one after another presented him with a number of treatment options. He knew better than to trust their brave "let's fight this together" optimism.

  There were other choices outside of modern medicine available to a man like him, though. Of course, you had to have a certain mindset for dealing with them, but he had that down. Hell, he'd lost all ability to be squeamish back when he'd been human the first time around. Piece of cake now.

  So Charon sought out that knowledge for his cure. Quickly. As his energy was consumed by his disease, he replaced it with whatever ambient power happened to be lying around. There was plenty of acreage in the Otherside ready to be turned into car parks now, and who would miss a few floating parasites or even place-guardians? Once the place was gone a guardian was out of a job anyway.

  It took him a little practice to learn how to feed fully from those energies, but once he got the hang of it . . . wow. Hell of a trip. Way better than anything he'd ever puffed from a hookah. The important thing was that for short stretches he felt better. So far it hadn't reversed or even slowed the cancer that was eating him alive, but he had more energy to deal with it. The pause at Stonehenge had given him enough of an upturn to get him across the Atlantic, and Chichén Itzá would carry him a for at least the rest of today. More than enough time if he worked it right. The snake blood had been a lucky bonus, fixing up his arm and eye like it did. He'd have to see what other of the old gods were hanging around, maybe go calling on them if his next ploy was a wash—

  No, don't go there. It will succeed. Positive thoughts.

  Gods were pretty damn tough, anyway. Jealous of their power, too. He'd gotten lucky with Kukie, surprised him, used the in-place energy for the fight. The next one down the line might be more prepared. It was getting harder and harder to keep all this veiled. That parasite shouldn't have been able to sense him.

  In the meantime, Charon was an old hand at dealing with hypersuspicious customs people and possessed perfectly legitimate (for once) paperwork concerning his ailment and why he needed the miniature pharmacy. It annoyed him to have so many medicines, but perhaps not for long. His next gambit would have to heal him. But if not, then he'd hit Lourdes and suck out its power. That should tide him over a bit.
r />   But first he had to pick up a little artifact that should have been his ages ago, the one that caused all the trouble for him in the first place and might correct it. He'd also tie up a loose end. Both of them. There were damned few people on the planet who could have the least inkling of what he was up to and he had to keep it that way. The Irish Amazon bimbo damn-near queered the whole scene. He'd done his best to throw a psychic screen around her, to keep her isolated, but chances were she'd gotten a warning out. Charon couldn't risk losing control of the works at this stage.

  His flight was called, finally, a morning run due north. Hours and hours of it, but not too bad in first class, and he wouldn't even have to reset his watch. He settled into his seat, enjoying the press of acceleration as they rumbled along the runway, then leapt skyward.

  Yes . . . he felt the wind energies outside the skin of the plane. He could use those—if the flight attendant would leave him alone long enough to concentrate.

  No such luck. Apparently she thought he was cute. He snarled that he had to sleep, shooing her off. At least he had no chatty seatmate.

  Immediate distractions shoved away, he closed his eyes and sank into the kind of trance that was necessary to travel the Low Road. A tricky path, no, make that foolish, especially with his mortal condition, but it would allow him to arrive ahead of his body. He wouldn't have to stay, just drop in for a few minutes' visit, long enough for a peek at what was going on, long enough to maybe do himself some good, then snap back again.

  Very few could stop him now. Two in particular, and both of them were in Canada, guarding the souvenir he wanted.

  How convenient.

  Yes, he'd have a long and tiring haul to Toronto with his physical body. Worth it, though. Once there he would take care of the bloodsucking jock and his witchy-bitchy girlfriend . . .

  Chapter Four

  Toronto

  It was just after six. Richard, sitting in his idling vehicle and ready to leave, called Bourland at last, knowing he would be out of bed by now.

  Bourland, apparently reading the familiar cell number from his caller ID, picked up and before Richard could speak asked in a wide-awake voice, "How did you know?" There was an edge to his usually warm tone.

  "Know what?"

  "Michael . . . he had a rather bad dream last night. Very bad. I sat up with him, half expecting Sabra to call. She always seems to know when he's troubled."

  "Is he all right?"

  "Oh, yes, he nodded off after a bit. Having his breakfast now. He's right as rain, as though nothing's amiss."

  "As it happens, Sabra does know and is coming your way. She expects to get there later this morning. I'd like to leave now, if that's all right with you."

  There was no surprise to this unusual request. "Of course, Richard. You're always welcome here whenever you like."

  Bourland was quite literal about that. Richard and Sabra had keys and the code for the house alarm. Richard would have gotten both anyway; it had been his security firm that designed and installed the system, after all, but it was nice to have a standing formal invitation.

  "There's one thing . . ." Bourland added.

  "What?" Richard was already backing from the drive.

  "I was going to do it anyway, but especially now with you both coming over. I thought it best to keep Michael home from school this once."

  "But I thought—"

  "He's just fine. It's for my sake not his. I've called in for myself. The Commonwealth can run on without my help for one day. I think I've earned a long weekend."

  "Then it begs the question 'Are you all right?' "

  "Mostly. We'll talk when you get here."

  Mostly. What the hell did that mean?

  Bourland had been in the vision, though. Had he also shared it? Remembered it? Not likely, since he had no notion of the uncanny lurking so close to his prosaic paper-driven, bureaucratic world. His realm was the Canadian government—a never-never land of its own, to be sure—but still well removed from metaphysical upheavals. The paranormal was a foreign country with no recognizable flag, and diplomatic relations were quite off the radar.

  Unless Sabra had been coaching him. She had a way of making the most insane concepts acceptable. If so, then it certainly might ease things. Best to leave explanations to her.

  Richard negotiated the slick streets in his Land Rover, speculating also about Michael. It was probable he had the same vision and heaven knows what he'd made of the frightening images. Children could be unexpectedly tough, though. Michael had lived through and apparently recovered from an overwhelming trauma in his young life. Perhaps the strength he'd gained from that tragedy would serve him here. After all, the focus was not on him this time. Like the others in their glowing shrouds of light, he'd been a bystander, not a participant. Richard hoped it would remain so. He was the warrior here, not his godson.

  Sabra predicted the boy's psychic abilities would grow stronger the older he got, more so once he began to enter puberty. As though the child didn't have enough on his plate just being a teenager in this day and age. Perhaps to better help she could move into the city for the next few years, and use her more distant house for a weekend retreat. Richard would like that. There was lots of room for the both of them at the Neville Park address. And she would love being so close to the lake. Plenty of primal energy there to please her, in the lake . . . and certainly himself.

  Of course, she might just as well move into Bourland's big house. Richard knew they occasionally slept together. But making love now and then with a friend was one thing; lengthy cohabitation always put a whole different dynamic to a relationship. Things between the three of them were well balanced for now. That sort of change either way could create a rather large upset to the status quo.

  Richard had been tempted to broach the subject with her, but prudently kept his mouth shut. Unless she asked his opinion it was none of his business. His lady would seek her own path as she'd ever done, and it would be for the best for all of them.

  The morning rush was not yet in full swing, meaning the slippery roads were still hazardous. He moved slowly along Queen, hitting spots where other tires had broken a trail on the snow and ice-caked paving, and leaving his trail in turn for others to use. A short but exciting slow-motion jaunt up the Don Valley Parkway, then he thankfully made the exit into the posh environs of Rosedale.

  Its curving streets were even more demanding with their nearly unbroken coating of snow, but that's what his vehicle was designed for; he managed not to jump any curbs in his forward progress.

  Bourland's house was almost modest compared to his neighbors; but still larger than anything Richard had lived in in some while. The Tudor style looked fine to modern eyes, but Richard had lived through the period and the mistakes made by the architect who built this example in the 1920s were quite hilarious. He never said anything to Bourland, of course; that would have been terrifically ill-mannered.

  Richard parked around back, considerately not blocking the garage entry, and went in through the mud room, stamping snow from his boots before proceeding to the kitchen. Bourland's housekeeper was just finishing the washing up for breakfast and smiled a greeting as he came in.

  "Some coffee, Mr. Dun?" she asked. "Just brewed it."

  Coffee was one of the few things humans consumed that did smell good to him. He'd wondered about its taste since the first houses opened and made it the rage of London way back when. They were nothing like the trendy, sterilized chains of today, but as with the men of business then, Bourland seemed addicted. "Thank you, another time. Where's Philip?"

  "In his study. He's staying home, but still working if you know what I mean."

  "Indeed I do." Richard speculated that with computers, faxes, and phones Bourland need never venture forth to his regular office ever again; he was not required to be in the public eye, after all. Politicians came and went, but civil servants were a constant. Bourland was something more than an ordinary civil servant though. In every government
there are hierarchies operating on all levels; Bourland's was in one of the most rarified areas and he was a senior member. When things needed to be accomplished, invisibly, it fell to people like him to get the job done. The less his presence was seen and felt, the better. Rather like Richard's own work through the ages.

  The study was downstairs, but Richard heard electronic music coming from the second floor, indication that Michael was playing at something. Likely not homework, if he had any. Richard went up.

  The boy's door was wide open. He had a bath and two rooms to himself. The first room held his bed and a scatter of books and toys and other items indicative of his changing if not maturing tastes. Due to daily patrols from the housekeeper, it wasn't nearly the wreckage it might have been, but his stamp was there, all the same. Trucks and plastic dinosaurs were gradually giving up space to a growing collection of model kits, video games, CDs and DVDs. He had a predilection for Schwarzenegger films, something of a shift from his once valued set of Disney animations. God, but he was growing so fast. In a very short time he'd want a real car, not a scale model.

  Richard knocked on the doorframe.

  "I'm in here, Dad." Obviously his gift of Sight was not on today or he'd have known his visitor. It was warming that Michael had so readily adopted Bourland in turn as his new father. Some children never bonded to that level of acceptance with their adopted families, but he had, and with an uncanny artlessness. It's what made it seem like he'd always been there.

  "It's me," Richard called, going through the door to the adjoining room.

  "Hey! Uncle Richard! Come see!" Michael, looking as normal as any thirteen-year-old, was tilted far back in a chair, knees high about his ears, bare feet braced on his computer desk. He wore pajama pants and an oversized hockey sweatshirt and clutched some kind of control device in his hands. He was apparently very involved destroying hoards of green and purple something-or-others with bulging eyes and lots of teeth. He cut them down using either a ray gun or a magic wand that fired bolts of light. Perhaps it was both in one.