For the first time, the housekeeper smiled. “I’d love to, but I’m on call most nights except while I’m on vacation. I can’t leave the estate.” Val felt crestfallen. “I have a great sound system in my rooms. You’re welcome to come down there and listen to music with me. The estate has an enormous CD collection. It has almost any artist or style you can think of. Some really rare old recordings, too.”
“Great,” Val said. “Maybe this evening?” Then she remembered her mystery visitor was due later. “Or tomorrow? I’m feeling kind of tired.”
“I would be honored,” Marcella said.
The door burst open suddenly, and Henry rushed in.
“There you are!” he exclaimed. He hurried to Val and took her hand. Marcella edged away, her eyes pleading. Val took that to mean that she wasn’t to mention what they had just been discussing.
“What can I do for you?” she asked Henry, briskly.
Henry pulled her to her feet. “Melinda just called. She wants you to go over a different set of spreadsheets with me.”
Val moaned. Melinda was running her life, and she wasn’t even there!
“I told you, I don’t work for her!”
“Well, that’s going to change, too,” Henry said, with a persuasive smile. “She wants to put you on salary.”
“What?” Val asked, taken off guard.
“Exactly. You show a lot of acumen, and that doesn’t come along every day. Why should you give away your talent? She thought sixty to start?”
“Sixty? Sixty what?”
Henry looked at her pityingly. “Sixty thousand, sweetheart. A year.”
Val felt her eyebrows hit her hairline. “Dollars?”
“Unless you want to be paid in jelly beans. Dollars. Yes.”
Val’s knees went weak. She felt for the chair and sank into it. Sixty thousand dollars? A year? Why, that was an executive’s salary. With money like that, she could buy a house with a yard, and a nice car. Her looming college loans would be no problem. In fact, she could start saving for her baby’s education. She looked at Henry disbelievingly.
“Seriously? She thinks I can manage it? I have no experience.”
“Melinda doesn’t joke, as you may have noticed.” Henry helped her up again. “Come on and look at the books for your new company.”
Val looked over her shoulder as he ushered her out of the dining room. The housekeeper had vanished through the other door without a sound.
Thirty-two
The George waited about twenty feet outside Val’s window until half past two in the morning. He was warm enough in spite of the light rain that was falling, but he was getting impatient. No shadows or sounds came from behind the light curtains. Had Melinda’s fussy majordomo discovered the note she had left for him? George took the folded and creased square of paper from his pocket and brought it to his nose again. Female, definitely. The hint of perfume from toiletries was that of a fresh, light scent. Not the housekeeper, then, who favored woodsy spices. The beautician smelled of hair spray. The housecleaners, both male and female, wore no scented products at all, but anything they touched would have reeked of Lysol. No, Val had to have been the only one to handle the note. She had agreed to see him. So, where was she?
George longed for a cigarette, but he checked the wind first. The prevailing westerlies would carry the smell straight to the air intake for the household ventilation system. That would bring Henry and his minions out on the run. No one but guests were allowed to smoke.
The cell phone in the breast pocket of the camouflage army jacket vibrated. He eased it out, making as few motions as possible, and brought it to his ear.
“Yeah?”
“You wanted an update,” Debbie said. The office manager didn’t waste time with meaningless niceties. “Melinda and her horde are about 140 miles from you.”
Out of habit, George looked around him and took a good sniff of the night air. Nothing but bushes and trees and a few night-roaming animals.
“Are they on their way here now?”
“No. They’re all tucked in at a fancy DC hotel, the Fairfax Inn. Very posh. No movement noted except the two big lugs walking perimeter.”
George had seen the pair of enforcer dragons who worked for Melinda. They were big, tough, and well trained. It would have taken him maybe three or four minutes to kill them both. But better the devils he knew than fresh unknowns. If he or anyone else from the office wiped them out, Melinda would hire someone more dangerous. When the day came that he got a contract on the Wurmleys, as they were currently calling themselves, he would rather have easy targets.
“Sure they’re not leaving?”
“My guess is no, unless Lizzy kicks up another fit like a few days ago.”
“Good.” George calculated. His car was in another lane parked among a dozen or so expensive numbers. One of Melinda’s not-too-close neighbors was having a party that looked to be continuing well past dawn. He figured that the police patrols wouldn’t notice his nondescript sedan among them. Once he made contact with Val, it should take no more than ninety seconds to get her outside the fence. Depending on how advanced her condition was, he guessed three to eight minutes to get her to the car. They could be on their way to New Orleans by three.
“When are you getting out of there?”
George poked the stud on the side of his watch that illuminated a minute LED. The digital numbers glowed dimly. “The girl hasn’t been in her room yet.”
“I think you’ve been stood up, honey,” Debbie said dryly.
“I doubt it. Something else must be going on.”
“Maybe she told someone about your note.”
George thought about it. “From my observations, that’s not her modus operandi. She keeps things as close to her chest as her brother does.”
Debbie’s voice held a warning. “Don’t get attached! They’re vermin. Just because they don’t act like monsters doesn’t change the reality! Do the job and get your ass back to headquarters. I have half a dozen assignments waiting.”
It was no use arguing with her about the McCandleses. George couldn’t say why he felt they were different from the other dragons he had stalked. True, it went against his instincts, let alone his training. Griffen McCandles struck him as a decent guy. He really didn’t think like a dragon. Maybe this next generation would be different.
“I’ll give it until three, then leave it for another day,” he said.
“All right. Call if you need to.”
“Got it.” George clicked off the cell phone and stuck it in his pocket.
His feet were losing sensation from standing in one position for such a long time. He changed their shape slightly inside the light boots. Instead of flaplike human feet, they were inverted baskets of bone, balanced on five points. The cramping eased. The new structure was one he had used before when he had done a long stakeout in a tree. He couldn’t run well this way, but he shouldn’t have to.
He always wanted to disabuse the young punks who tried to join his organization of the notion that killing dragons was in any way fun. Like SWAT-team work, it required training, good armament, surveillance, protecting one’s back, assessing the enemy, gathering evidence, and not moving in until one was certain of a clean kill with as little collateral damage as possible. The idea was to remove a dangerous pest and render the area safe for humanity to live, not to injure the sheep while taking out the wolf. Remaining alert for as long as one was close to a target was vital. What they hunted was smart, fast, incredibly tough, dangerous, and vindictive. An unwary hunter was prey. You could only hope you’d be killed right away if you were taken prisoner without hope of escape. George always made sure he had at least five routes of escape planned and secured. He had such a long list of kills that he didn’t stand a chance if he was intercepted in certain territories. That was one of the reasons it was so strange f
or him to have struck up an acquaintance with Griffen McCandles. Some of his relatives had been targets.
Maybe the boy didn’t know that yet. The George sighed. Nothing good could last forever.
Melinda was taking no chances on a breach of security. It had taken George a good two hours to slink onto the estate, creeping past a dozen cameras and weight-sensitive pressure plates. God help the rabbit that landed on one of those hidden balances by accident. Two were wired with enough high voltage to fry almost anything smaller than an elephant. Five were dead drops into tiger traps filled with sharpened aluminum spikes. One near Melinda’s bedroom window had been booby-trapped with military-grade C4 explosives and a hair trigger. At least that one had been sprayed with fox urine to keep the local wildlife off. He doubted the effort was out of basic decency; it would prevent unnecessary explosions. Melinda kept four huge black-and-tan dogs. They were loyal to their handler but to no one else on Earth. They’d refused every bribe George had tried on them. The net had been drawn admirably tight—against anyone who wasn’t an experienced hunter, and a shape-shifter to boot.
Locating her country home had taken days of analyzing data from multiple public-records systems across America. Wealthy dragons generally hid their ownership behind a maze of holding companies and blind trusts. Melinda had been around long enough to leave property to herself in a couple of wills. This one had been really well hidden. It dated from colonial days, the property of an ancestor of hers who had come over with the first settlers. Its discovery had made the investigators and researchers in the office sit up with interest. They were going to delve into historic land grants and cross-reference them, but George had what he needed to start his mission. Posing as a journalist doing a puff piece on the Founding Fathers for a major news network, he had gotten the county assessor to open the plats of survey and show him the land boundaries. As they were a matter of public record, the names were printed in perfect block capitals on each property. “WURMLEY” spread out over numerous plots of land, but the largest and most easily defended had been this one. George had staked out the household’s comings and goings over a week before. He had seen Valerie McCandles riding in a car, but he had not wanted to phone Griffen yet with the news. She seemed to be happy, not under duress. First impressions had to be followed up with a face-to-face meeting.
He liked the place. It was built on the kind of gracious, elegant lines prevalent before the Federal period. When it had been updated, which it had, the architects had kept the original lines but shored it up and made it more weatherproof and energy efficient. Melinda, or her ancestors, had spent money well.
It had not been spent only on physical alterations. George could sense spells of various kinds worked into the materials. There was a “forget me” sense imbued in all the doors and windows. Anyone who passed through them going out would forget how to get back to the house unless they had an amulet or a counterspell. Nice if you had in-laws you never wanted to have drop in again.
Five to three. The rain was coming down heavier. George’s clothes were soaked through. If he’d been human, he would have been chilled, but all he did was change how his body stored heat. The pale night-light in the room hadn’t yet been interrupted. George widened his pupils to admit a little more light, just in case he was missing a faint shadow. No. Where was the girl?
It was too late for a clean getaway this evening. He took another note, prepared in advance, from the side pocket of his jacket and slid the slightly soggy paper under the sash.
A siren split the night. George leaped away from the side of the house. He had tripped the alarm system.
Goddammit! he thought. That level of pressure hadn’t done it the previous evening. The humidity must have made the paper swell beyond the tolerance of the unit.
The thunder of footsteps boomed down the stairs inside the mansion. George slipped into the trees and headed for his shortest retreat. He saw the terrain as protrusions and shadows. He ducked to avoid the former and trod carefully in the latter. He couldn’t avoid every twig. A SNAP! made his heart pound with alarm. He drew a long Special Forces knife with a blackened blade from his pocket and slid it up his sleeve.
Behind him, the household had erupted from the front and rear doors. He counted the sound of six voices but at least twice that many sets of footsteps.
“Awwooooo!”
And, double goddammit, the dogs were out. George concentrated on re-forming his feet to fit the shoes. Trying to concentrate on too many things at once distracted him. He tripped and hit the ground on his belly. Not bothering to get up, he crawled, commando fashion. It was slower, but the humans were looking for an upright man. As he went, he lengthened his body and shortened his legs until he was more crocodile in shape than human. He put on a burst of speed and made for the fence.
The dogs found his scent easily. Bellowing like hunting hounds, they dashed into the underbrush. Deer that hadn’t stirred a hair when George passed sprang up and dashed in all directions. The dogs were distracted, but only momentarily.
The handlers’ voices fell far behind. He heard Henry’s shout above all.
“Block the gates! Don’t let him out!”
As if I were going to go out by either gate, George thought scornfully. He refused to underestimate the majordomo, though. If Melinda trusted him to maintain her castle—and her guest—in her absence, he had to be more perspicacious than the average human.
George slithered into a dip and discovered that rainwater had pooled there. His clothes, already soaked, picked up clumps of soggy debris. He spat out a decaying leaf. He grabbed hold of the nearest tree trunk and scaled it with his claws, hugging close to the bark. As soon as he reached a heavy branch, he slithered out along its length, then flung himself toward the next tree. Accompanied by a sharp creak and a crash, he made it to a branch two feet lower than the one he had been on. He halted there, clinging to the rough bark, listening closely. The dogs followed his scent to the first tree and surrounded it, baying. The handlers caught up. Out of the corner of his eye, George saw flashlight beams lance upward. He grinned to himself. Scrabbling down the trunk, he concentrated on putting as much distance behind him as he could.
The bittersweet, mixed aroma of soaked leaves and pine needles, mud and raccoon dung through which he was crawling filled his nostrils. He wiped some of the crud off along tree roots. His clothing was going to be a mess when he got out of there. Then he caught the whiff of a sharp scent. The acrid fume made his eyes water. It reminded him of ozone from an electric circuit, but it had an animal character to it as well. George yanked out all his mental file drawers searching for an analogue. Nothing matched. Had some innocent animal died burning on the electric wire running along the top of the walls?
No, whatever it was, it was alive. And, his hunter’s instinct told him, homing in on him.
He slid to a halt and listened closely. His pursuer stopped, too, but not before George gained a fleeting impression of the direction from which it was coming. If he kept going toward the fence, it would intercept him from eleven o’clock. He wheeled around and took off at a right angle to his previous path. It put the other hunter behind him but made him pass through terrain that George had previously traversed. How it handled that would give him some more information.
It moved fast, a speed at which the rustling noises traversed from one side of his trail to another. The George kicked up his pace. He couldn’t help being alarmed. What did Melinda have back there? A Komodo dragon? He hoped not. The giant lizard’s poisonous bite couldn’t kill him even if it did hurt like hell, but it would make him sick.
An anguished yelp and a howl told him the beast on his trail had come across the dogs. One of them might have taken a nip at it or just gotten in the way. The handlers’ voices exclaimed in alarm. Henry shouted them down.
George neared the closest exit, then changed his mind about using it. The drain that led into the storm sewer unde
r the street outside was too convenient. It was the roomiest and easiest to access of all the escapes. Once he left his scent in it, it would be useless to him a second time, and he needed a second time to get Val out. The next closest lay only ten yards to his right. The lanterns on top of the pillars abutting the entry gates cast some light on it, so George took a risk going there, but the passage between two fence sections was narrow enough that the creature on his tail couldn’t overtake and trap him on the wrong side.
He made for the gap in the fence. It meant covering some fairly open terrain underneath mature evergreen bushes. No time to second-guess himself. He added extra muscle to his back legs and gave it all he had. Shadows of branches spotlighted by the handlers’ flashlights made a chiaroscuro jumble ahead of him. He had to go by sense and memory. The bushes nearest the gap were juniper, the only ones in the front hedge.
A blast of lightning followed by a clap of thunder burst overhead. The George paused for a moment, taking advantage of the brilliant light to get his bearings. He could see a tiny thread of light peeking in from the gap. The rain pelted down harder now. George scuttled underneath the edge of a heavy bush.
Something caught his right pant leg. He jerked it forward, hoping to dislodge the bramble. Instead, a whole body shot forward and landed on his back. A cold, acid gust breathed in his face. Saliva dribbled down his neck.
Instantly, George flipped over on his back. His short, powerful legs flung the creature a couple of yards away. It lunged for him again. George drew his knife and stabbed at it.
In the faint light, he saw the creature’s outline. At no time in his long career had he ever seen one like it. If the Hildebrandts had asked this monster to model for Gollum, there would never have been a second Lord of the Rings calendar. It was skinny, almost gaunt, with hollow cheeks in a faintly humanoid face, but its teeth were sharklike rows of filed wedges. Drool came out of both sides of its mouth as it tried to bite George. He fended it off his neck while looking for weak spots.
Robert Asprin's Dragons Run Page 23