Choose your enemies carefully s-2

by Robert N. Charrette

  "Remarkable."

  The next words were distant, lacking in the obscene clarity of the previous ones. It was as if someone else spoke in a language that she did not understand.

  "It is as you say."

  More bodiless voices murmured to the man and he spoke back. His comments and questions melded with the susurrus of the distant voices until at last he said, "She shall at least be useful."

  A new face rose before her eyes. It was masked and hooded, swathed in cloth of pale green. Dark eyes regarded her without emotion. She might have been a bench. An impossible mouth opened in the masked face, its teeth a glittering array of hypodermic needles. The mouth drew nearer and she screamed again. And again. Unable to move, unable to even turn her head, she stared in deadly fascination as the obscene visage drew closer. Closer. The violator's lips touched hers and her mouth went numb.

  Her vision fogged and star-shot darkness swirled around her. She felt detached as the violator's face lifted from hers. The needles were gone. There were only dark, lustrous, slightly slanted eyes behind the green mask. Then the mask melted away and she beheld the face of Hugh Glass. His fine elven features were as beautiful as ever.

  How had he come to be here? He had rescued her from Yomi, promising to take her to safety. Had he come to take her away again? But she had been an ork when she had met Hugh. Now she was human. She reached out, longing to convince herself that he was real. She so desperately wanted the nightmare with the golden-eyed man to be over that she was happy to see even Hugh. She looked at the hand she was lifting to touch his face. It was furred and taloned. She wasn't human anymore. She would never be human again.

  Hugh smiled at her. His lips parted as his grin grew, and the perfect white teeth that she remembered were not there. In their place was a writhing mass of corruption. He laughed as she screamed.

  She clawed at him, feeling grim satisfaction as she felt flesh tear under her talons. Then her arm was restrained again with a harsh, hot pressure around her wrist. But she smelled blood. It was good. It was real.

  She awoke.

  Her wrist was held by Dan's strong hand. Bright Wood welled from scratches in the dark skin of his face, but his expression was not one of anger. His eyes were full of concern; for her, she realized. As soon as he understood that she was fully awake, he released his grip. She started to shake and he embraced her, murmuring soft reassurances.

  In her dream, she had seen him as Hugh and struck out. But he was not Hugh. He would never be Hugh. Hugh would have struck her back. Dan was always gentle with her, a kind spirit in a bestial body, the exact opposite of the handsome Hugh.

  Teary-eyed, she examined the wound she had caused. It was already healing. She sniffed and gave him a weak smile.

  "It's all right," he said.

  And it was. She felt safe, secure. Shiroi's love was real, unlike the false promises of Hugh. If she had harbored any remaining doubts, his patient, caring reaction to her violence banished them. Shiroi's love was no sham, no ploy to use her for his purposes. She knew Shiroi loved her for herself. How could she not love him back?

  The man of Light confronted Sam again, blazing with the intensity of the sun. Sam could not look at him, could not stand before him. The heat scorched Sam's skin, driving him to retreat. Sam's earliest manifestation of shamanic power had been a spontaneous protection from fire, but this was a fire from which he was not safe. He howled in frustration, a frighteningly animal sound.

  The Man of Light laughed.

  Sam fled the laughter all the way to wakefulness. The room in which he had been sleeping was cold, but the sheets were soaked with sweat. Seeking comfort, he reached out for Hart and found she was gone. He was alone in the twilight gloom.

  Through the open door he could hear the tapping of ringers on a keyboard in the next room. The rhythm wasn't Dodger's; there were odd patterns in the tapping, so it must be Willie rigging. There were no voices. Most likely, the technomancer was alone. Sam wondered where Hart had gone.

  Sam threw back the clammy sheets and got out of bed. He was shaking, and he knew that it was from more than a chill in the room. Every time he even thought about the Man of Light, he felt the terror rise.

  He didn't know where the Man had come from. It seemed to Sam that He hadn't always been there, blocking the way to the shamanic planes. But Sam wasn't sure. Sam had never been comfortable with the idea of being a shaman. Perhaps the Man of Light was only a manifestation of his own fears. The Man might simply be a symbolic representation of his own reluctance to practice the shamanic powers.

  The water from the sink didn't flow very quickly. His fingers were numb from its frigid touch before he had gathered enough to splash into his face. The shock was bracing and cleared his head a bit. He ran his damp hands through his hair and beard, smoothing them into place. Trying to put his night fears behind him, he dressed.

  "Hoi, Twist," Willie greeted him as he entered the room where the dwarf woman was engaged with her hardware. "Kaf on the plate."

  "Thanks," he mumbled. He got some juice out of the refrigerator. "Working?" "Just testing my eyes and ears." "Hart say where she was going?" "Neg."

  "How about when she'd be back?"

  "Neg."

  Great.

  "Null the glum, chummer Twist. Let me give you a little something for your other set of brains. Stayed around after you meatfeet left the squat with the bods and watched the badges. They didn't spend a lot of time, but they did mess up the scene and didn't take any evidence. In fact, it looked to me like they were deliberately destroying some. So I got suspicious and followed them. They met with Inspector Burnside. He didn't seem very surprised by their report, and that got me really suspicious." She waited for Sam's reaction and shrugged when he had none. "That didn't add, Twist. Burnside's a copper's cop, straight as they come. The whole shadow world knows that he's a hardnosed, real believer in justice that don't bend the law. But those jokers reporting to him had done just that. And he just listened. I tell ya, Twist, it don't add." "Maybe he's changed."

  "Burnside's immutable."

  "Maybe somebody's blackmailing him."

  "Possible, but unlikely. Even if he'd done something wrong that your somebody could hold over his head, Burnside would more than likely bring them up on charges, even if he took a fall himself."

  "I wish we knew more. Dodger could deck into his files, but he's not here. I don't suppose you could do it, Willie."

  "Why don't you do it yourself? You've got a jack."

  "I don't deck anymore."

  Willie gave him a look that told him she thought that his mind was short-circuited. In her world, nobody ever gave it up until they died or brain-fried.

  "I suppose I could, since your elf buddy is still busy. If you've got access to a good enough deck. No guarantees, though. It's not my line. A rig may look like a deck but it's completely different where it counts."

  "I understand. I'll see what I can do."

  It took Sam less than an hour to make a deal with a fixer he had met through Hart. The negotiation wasn't easy, and Sam came away owing more than he cared. He also came away with the cyberdeck he needed.

  A few hours later, Willie jacked out and said,

  "Don't that beat it."

  "What?"

  "Burnside is the officer in charge of the Bone Boy Murders investigation. Has been since the third batch of skeletons turned up. Direct transfer from on high."

  "Who?"

  "Been taking a course in interrogatives, Twist?" Willie's laugh would have been a giggle if it had been higher pitched. "Well, there are the usual official orders, but they're not quite right. Wrong incept codes. It took a little doing but I found a trail that leads right on up to the Ministry of the Interior.''

  "The government's involved." Rogue druids, megalomaniac corporates, and fanatical aristocrats weren't enough.

  "Part of it, anyway." Willie positioned the soles of her boots against the edge of the table and rocked her chair back. "What now, Twist?"


  "Let's start with the police. Check Burnside's duty roster and compare it with that of the two officers you followed last night. See where they coincide. We'll want to know how wide the conspiracy is. And see if there are any shifts from a regular schedule. Back check it, too."

  Willie grumbled, but she went back to work.

  When she jacked out again, Sam said, "I'll bet you came up with a correlation between sudden duty for Burnside and his friends and the dates and times of Bone Boy hits. Or at least a correspondence with the discovery of the bodies."

  "So why did I have to do all this work?"

  "I was just guessing. We can't afford to guess."

  "Yeah, well. Did you guess that there's a pattern to the Bone Boy killings?''

  "What kind of pattern?"

  "A nasty one. There's a few breaks in the first set, but it's pretty clear, anyway. The second set confirms it."

  "Confirms what, Willie?"

  "The pattern. The number of bodies goes one on the first night, two the next time, three after that, and so on until there are seven victims. Then it starts again."

  "Seven? Not nine?"

  "Affirm."

  "There were nine druids in the Circle."

  "And two of them croaked on the Solstice."

  "They might have restored their number. That would be the smart thing for a magical circle to do. Maybe the Bone Boy killers aren't the Circle."

  "Whoever is doing the killing, they're methodical. Seven days between the first and second killings. Six between the second and third, and on down to two between body count six and seven, Just one day, then a single Bone Boy kill. Seven days later, a double. And so on. Three days ago, we got five bodies. Get the picture?"

  "Very methodical. Tonight should be a six-victim killing. Whether it's the Hidden Circle or not, this is a ritual spree."

  Willie and Sam progressed from arguing the possible connection to the druids to using Willie's spy drone to monitor the progress of the police. If they followed the pattern, the Bone Boys would be active tonight, and if the police were involved, the runners might lead the watchers to the site in time to determine the nature of the perpetrators. At the very least, they might be able to rule out police collusion. Willie's drone headed for the Burnside's stationhouse, and they only had to wait a half-hour before he left. He was joined by the two detectives the runners had previously almost encountered. Willie and Sam watched the trio set up a tail on an individual who emerged from a fancy townhouse in Regent's Park. They were hunched over the receptor screen when Hart returned.

  "What's going down?" she asked.

  "We're waiting for something to happen," Sam replied abstractedly.

  Hart squinted at the display screen. "That's Burnside!"

  "Uh-huh."

  "What's going on?"

  Sam explained what he and Willie had found out and the theories the data had spawned. Hart joined them at the screen.

  Willie's drone was focused on Burnside and the two officers who accompanied him. All were dressed for undercover work and blended in with the street crowd. The only thing which set them apart was their apparent nervousness. After some minutes, Burnside sent his two officers away. Willie sent the drone flitting after them and discovered that they were taking up independent surveillance positions around the building the man had entered. The policemen had set up an oldfashioned stakeout. They could have used a drone similar to Willie's, but they didn'ta151a sure indication the operation was not official, since police use of remote pilot machines needed to be recorded.

  Willie sent the drone higher to cover the whole block. It was another hour before anything happened. Then Hart spotted someone leaving the building and directed Willie to send the drone in for a closer look. Careful to keep her machine out of sight, Willie positioned it for a zoom-in shot of the persons exiting the building. A woman led a pack of three men, who struggled with plastic sacks. None were familiar, but Willie recorded their images.

  The drone returned to station in time to catch a second group almost vanishing from its camera range. The sacks on the backs of that group's laggards prompted a quick pursuit. This time, the runners were rewarded.

  "Glover," Sam said quietly.

  There was no doubt about his identity; Sam knew the face too well. Willie recorded the images of the strangers accompanying the druid.

  "Back to station, Willie," Hart ordered. "They're leaving in small groups and we don't want to miss any. If the pattern holds, my guess is that all but one were present tonight."

  "Roger."

  The drone flitted back. It swooped four more times to record the passage of furtive groups leaving the scene. When the last group had left, the policemen began to move in. Taking a risk that the badges would spot the drone, Willie sent it in ahead of them for a fast pass to confirm the contents of the building. Deep in its heart lay six skeletons, already being attacked by scavengers.

  "Do we tell Estios?" Willie asked.

  "Not just yet. Let's run down the images first,"

  Hart suggested.

  "It's your call, Twist," Willie said.

  Sam sighed. "We'd better identify them first."

  "Roger," Willie responded. She dumped the recordings to the cyberdeck and began the process of image enhancement and correlation.

  Sam hoped it wouldn't take long. If the pattern held, and he had no reason to believe it wouldn't, seven more innocents would die in less than forty-eight hours.

  "Your report was most enlightening, Katherine." Bambatu smiled, his teeth a dazzling white against the darkness of his skin. "But I fear that you must change your plans. The Lady has considered the information and is determined on a new course of action. The foolish druids of the Hidden Circle have embarked on a course that the Lady believes will be their downfall and that of the Lord Protector. She is convinced of it. In fact, she is sure that they will collapse in such a decisive and spectacular manner that they shall need no help from us. Such self-destruction suits the Lady's plans better than the original plan to disrupt them from outside. Therefore, she wishes that you no longer par – _

  172 Robert N. Charrette ticipate in any operations that will curtail the Circle's activities."

  "What about Verner and the Estios's crew?" "They must not be allowed to disturb the Circle, either.''

  That was a troublesome order. Sam was not going to be easy to dissuade. She had encountered his dogged persistence during the doppelganger affair. And since they had become lovers, she had learned how deeply his passion for justice ran. He would not give up on this chase until it was concluded. He would be impossible to live with if she forced him away from his quest to make the Circle pay for their evil. To her surprise, she found herself worried about that possibility. Why? He was just another bedmate. Wasn't he? She hadn't even begun to consider the implications of her concern when Bombatu resumed speaking.

  "The Lady has decided that eliminating Verner from the situation would disrupt the runner operations most effectively with the least repercussions. She expects you to handle the details with your usual efficiency. "I'll get him out of the country immediately." "Oh no, Katherine. That will not do. He must be killed."

  "West on Romford Road."

  The audio signal was a surprise. Willie didn't often speak while rigging. She claimed that it disturbed her rapport with the machine.

  She was trailing one of the newly identified druids,

  Thomas Alfred Carstairs, Lord Mayor of the industrial Birmingham District of the London Sprawl. The Lord Mayor was accompanied by a pair of toughs who registered as enhanced on Willie's scanners. All three were carrying weapons. Beyond his bodyguardservants, the Lord Mayor had dispensed with the usual entourage. He had business tonight; private business.

  The pattern of killings predicted that tonight would see another kill of seven, one for each druid. The runners knew now that the Hidden Circle had not replaced the members lost on the Solstice. They had not recruited replacements to restore their number before engagi
ng in further ritual activities. Did they feel the press of time? Were they facing some deadline? The runners were still in the dark as to the reason for the Circle's nefarious activities.

  Sam hoped that Carstairs was going to be easier to trail than Glover had been when they had first discovered the connection between the Bone Boy killings and the Hidden Circle. The runners could not afford the time to search house-to-house if he lost them as he neared his proposed murder site. Sam didn't want to see anyone else die to serve the Circle's ends.

  Following Inspector Burnside was also no longer an option. That course had gotten expensive when he had spotted one of Willie's spy drones and had it skragged by a stiage from the precinct anti-surveillance squad. The dwarf rigger had flatly refused to send any more with him.

  With the night of sacrifice upon them, they had just finished identifying the Circle's members by name, and there had only been enough time to locate one of them, the Honorable Mister Carstairs. Like all of the druids, the Lord Mayor was a magician, and that made it risky to follow him astrally. The ground team worked a mundane trail, supplemented by Willie's drone.

  The group of hunters managed to move through the crowds and cold winter fog without incident. Willie signaled that Carstairs had reached a destination, and the runners regrouped. Carstairs had entered an old warehouse, its name and trade long obliterated by time and the corrosive action of the London atmosphere. The broken pavement of the street sloped and Sam knew they were somewhere near the river; the fog was always thicker there.

  "Recon, Willie," Sam ordered. "Find out where they've set up and signal when they begin the ritual. We'll want to catch them then. That'll be as low as their guard will get before they start killing people."

  One beep signaled Willie's affirmative.

  They waited.

  Estios and his team checked their guns, returning them to concealment under their long coats whenever a passerby wandered close. Hart fingered one of the decorations on her belt. They were deadly throwing weapons but looked like mere decorative flash. Fidgeting wasn't like her. She had seemed distracted for the past two days, but she had shut down his every attempt to talk with a shake of her head and a sad smile. Her attitude only increased his own nervousness. He jumped when Willie sent twin beeps to the receiver in his ear.