On the mundane plane, the wendigo's body looked shrunken, a bag of skin over a frame of bone. The spirit stood by the side of the body and pulled the pipe free.
"The darkness is gone," it said in a voice only Sam could hear.
"You have done all that I could ask, spirit. I can think of no better way to thank you than by giving you your freedom."
"You would do this for me? I still owe you services."
"We fought a common foe. You owe me nothing, and I ask nothing more of you. You are free."
"Honor to you, man," the spirit said as it faded from sight.
Sam could have followed its departure astrally. He wanted to. He desperately wanted to know where the spirit would go. But somehow that didn't seem right.
He crawled past the husk of the wendigo toward Hart. Her breathing was ragged and shallow, and he hurried even though he knew that he was aggravating his own injuries. Pain seemed a small price to pay to be by her side. He touched her face with his hands and found that she was crying. She stirred at his touch and opened her eyes. It took her a few seconds to recognize him. Once she did, she tried to raise her arm.
"Wrist," she gasped.
Trying not to hurt her, Sam unsnapped the cuff and rolled back her sleeve. Sam recognized the name and logo of DocWagon on the circuit board embedded within the clear plastic band she wore. The base color of the board was platinum.
"Don't leave home without it." She tried to smile at him, but the effort to talk had exhausted her waning strength.
He pressed the stud that would summon the medical service.
His own injuries sapped his strength, but he knew that unless he did something foolish, he would probably live. He was not so sure about her. After all she had done to keep him from stopping the wendigo, she had risked her life to save him and give him the time to call the spirit.
"Why?" he asked.
"I wish I knew."
She passed out.
By the time Janice reached the residence floor, everything was quiet. That made her nervous. She had heard his last scream. It had been so full of pain that she feared for his safety. How could anything have happened to him? He was stronger than any norm shaman.
She skirted the hole on the entryway floor. Unlike in the elevator shaft, there was no strong residue of magic. The destruction here was purely physical.
The doors of the formal entrance were open. Through them wafted the faint odor of blood. Tense and alert, she padded through the archway.
There were a lot of scents in the air, but all were faint; the floor's climate control system was busy pumping warm air out the shattered northern window wall and diluting the concentrations below the level she could track. Still, she identified the scent of strangers lingering in the air. One, a male, was vaguely familiar, but the other, a female, was new to her. There was also the ozone tang of machines like the one that had almost struck her in the elevator shaft. That odor was strong enough to indicate that there might be several of the things; they didn't have enough individuality for her to tell if there had been only the one or if more might be lurking about. The machine had been small enough to hide effectively.
The one scent she most wanted to smell was the most elusive.
A high-pitched, sequenced beeping reached her. It was beyond the range of a norm hearing, or even an elf's. It was clearly a signal. She knew of nothing in the residence that would emit such a noise; the device must belong to the intruders. She listened carefully, then shifted position and listened again. The sound seemed to be originating somewhere east of the sanctum. She moved cautiously toward the source.
As she drew nearer, her apprehension grew. With the air flow moving toward her the odors, all of them, grew stronger. Dan's was among them. But her momentary flare of relief was snuffed by the realization that the intruder's signal continued. Dan would not have let it continue if he were able to stop it. Worse, she sensed a lingering tingle of magic.
She stopped before one of the studies where blood spattered the floors and walls. Beyond the hallway in one of the large living areas, she could see a crater in the wall. From somewhere out of sight around a partition, she could hear a male voice whispering assurances. It was not Dan's voice. She crept forward.
She reached the corner, and her wary peering rewarded her with a sight that tore her heart. Dan's body lay sprawled on the floor. His limp form was emaciated, his bones pressing against his once-glossy pelt. The white fur was fouled and matted with blood. A great, gaping wound covered his left shoulder, and his right hand, the hand that had stroked her so tenderly, was missing. It had been jaggedly severed and was nowhere in sight. Her caution and fear were swept away. She rushed from concealment and threw herself on him. He was so still. She didn't want to believe he was dead, but her eyes could only see the blood and the wounds. Her ears could not hear him breathe, and her touch found only chill. He was far colder than he should be. Tears streamed from her eyes, blurring her sight. Her ears filled with the sounds of great sobs which she knew were her own. She felt him cold under her hands and wanted to deny what she felt. It was not possible, he couldn't be dead.
"Fragging drek, Twist. It's got a mate." The words broke through her grief. Those words were meant for the norm shaman and whispered from his earpiece receiver, but she heard them. She raised her tear-blurred eyes and looked at the intruders for the first time.
The woman lay against a wall, unconscious and nearly dead. The man was the shaman she had seen raising the spirit against Dan. He was battered and covered with blood. Though his face was screwed into a rictus of pain, he was struggling to prop up his torso. In one hand he held a dagger of red-gold metal, but he seemed otherwise unarmed. Save for his magic, she reminded herself. One of the machines sat near his head; the gun barrel of the tiny turret pointed directly at her.
These were the ones who had taken Dan from her.
She sat back on her heels, noting as she did that the machine's gun tracked her motion. Ignoring them she passed a gentle hand along Dan's face. They had closed his eyes. Her fingers lingered on his lips. They had stolen his smile. She let her hand trail down to his chest. They had stilled his heart.
She focused her intent, wrapping herself in the illusion that she was as she had been, grieving over Dan's body. Beneath the image, she crouched in readiness.
They would die.
She leapt.
Her illusion vanished as she moved. The killers finally reacted, but, they were too late. The gun turret could not swivel fast enough to track her. The shaman was too weak to come close to matching her speed. She was already in the air and soon she would rend them.
She slammed into an invisible wall, and her lethal pounce was converted into an ignominious tumble to the floor. She felt her mind teeter on the brink of madnessa151the magical barrier tasted of Dan.
As she turned to his body, she found his head turned slightly in her direction. His eyelids seemed to be open, but she could not see the glitter of his eyes.
She returned to him and kissed his lips. Her joy faltered. He was cold, and his chest remained still. And yet, with no air in his lungs to force the sounds out of his throat, he spoke.
"I could not let you do it."
She probed with all her senses and only confused herself. He was there but not there. She wanted him alive. Her tears fell upon his face but not a muscle twitched. She didn't know what to do.
"No kindeath. The blood is too strong. It taints. It's so heavy. It taints. For you, my darling, I fear it would be fatal."
She combed his mane with her talons. "Be quiet, my love. I shall sing the healing songs for you."
"No songs. The meat is finished, and the feaster is no more. From the brink of the dark I heard you weep for me, and your tears, your love, let me save you this once."
"Save me? I would have killed them for you."
"No," his sepulcral voice insisted. "Promise me.
Forswear the kindeath."
"What are you saying, my love? What is
this kindeath?"
"Promise."
His voice had become fainter and echoed hollowly, but she recognized his force of will in the demand.
"Anything. I promise. No kindeath. Whatever you want. Just come back to me," she pleaded.
"The Dog shaman. He is your brother."
With that dire pronouncement, Janice felt him leave and knew that all Dan Shiroi had been was gone. Forever. She poured her anguish into her scream.
Sam could not believe what he was hearing. The voice from the dead wendigo was something he feared would haunt his nightmares. But as terrifying as that was, the words the voice spoke were worse. Was this great furry thing, this female wendigo, his sister Janice? God could not be so cruel.
He shifted to astral perception and studied the being's aura. He knew now how to recognize a wendigo aura, and he had no doubt that he was seeing one. But he had not been magically active the last time he had seen his sister. Nor had she gone through the change. How would he know if this was she? He could not be sure. Like a half-remembered dream, something in the being's aura nagged with familiarity.
"Janice?"
The red-rimmed eyes that turned to him were bleak.
The face in which they were set was totally unfamiliar. He could not find a hint of his sister's fair features. He had already heard this wendigo's voice and found nothing to recognize in it.
"Sam?"
His throat constricted when he heard her pronounce his name, "Sa-am." His doubts fled. "Lord in Heaven, it is you."
There was so much to say, but Sam couldn't find the words. Ever since he had heard of her goblinization, he had feared for her. His attempts to contact her through Renraku had been inexplicably stifled. But he had never forgotten her, never stopped trying to figure out a way to contact her. She stood before him now and the moment was nothing like any he had imagined. He had been afraid kawaru had left her an ork, or worse, a trolla151but this! Ever since he had learned what wendigo were, he had hated them. Janice only stared at him, her dark eyes an enigma. Finally he stammered, "I want to help." "Where were you when I needed you before?" she asked accusingly. "I tried to-"
"If you had really fragging tried, you would have done something. Dan was there when I needed him. You abandon me, then you come back into my life, and you take him away from me. You want to help me? Bring him back." "But he was a wendigo."
"And what do you think / am?" she shouted, slamming a great paw against her chest. "There has to be a way to help you." Her laughter was bitter. "And I grew up thinking / was the romantic and you were the practical one. There's no redemption for me. Don't you see I'm already damned?"
"I can't believe that you just let her leave." Estios stormed back and forth across the short space afforded him. The apartment was one of Hart's safehouses. The back room had been roomy for Willie and her rigger board, but with all the runners gathered, space was at a premium. Most of the fine furniture had been pushed back against the walls to make room for the Mitsuhama Medical Technologies Home Convalesence Bed in which Hart lay. The runners, both the unscathed and the wounded, and their gear looked absurdly out of place among the wainscoting, natural fiber rugs, and timber-beamed ceiling.
As soon as Estios passed him, Dodger stuck a foot into the open space. Estios's attention was focused on Sam; he remained unaware of the obstruction as he retraced his path. Teresa elbowed Dodger in the ribs and he retracted his foot just before Estios would have stumbled over it.
Monitoring the readouts on the MMT bed, Sam was only half-aware of Estios's ravings. Sam was no expert, but he thought the readings indicated that Hart should be conscious. Though her eyes remained closed and she didn't respond when he whispered her name, he felt sure she was awake, refusing to acknowledge anything around her.
He was afraid that he was what she was avoiding. But it might have been that she didn't want to deal with the loud-mouthed Estios, or maybe she just wanted to rest. Either made sense. They had all been through a lot and no one wanted to hear Estios rant.
Sam looked around the room. Dodger and Teresa were holding a private conversation where they sat on the long couch. They were intense and Dodger looked unhappy. Willie sat hunched over her rigger board and was ostentatiously busy with the controls. Father Rinaldi, when they had been exchanging tales in the Shidhe holding cell, had told Sam that he disliked any kind of computer-human interface, but he was helping Willie watch the viewscreen. From what little Sam could see of the pictures relayed from her spotter drones, nothing much was happening. Obviously, Janice was still inside the rundown tenement where she had gone to ground.
Sam suddenly realized Estios had stopped talking and was looking at him. The elf must have asked a question. With no memory of having heard the question, Sam had no hope of answering it.
"Look," he said with a sigh. "It's over. The Circle's broken."
"Weren't you listening? It's not over as long as
Ashton and Wallace are still out there."
"If you're so worried about them, go do something about it. I think they were just minor players. With the others all dead, especially the wendigo who built the Circle and fed them the power they thought their sacrifices gained them, they won't be a problem. An anonymous message to the Lord Protector's Oversight Board will get them their comeuppance."
"They might still escape and recruit new members. Even if they do not, the monster's mate is still out there."
Sam buried his face in his hands and tried to massage away the anger he felt toward the obtuse Estios. "Forget her. She wasn't part of the Circle." "I can't forget her. She's a wendigo. That's enough reason for her to die."
Sam got to his feet. His ribs ached within the restraint of his torso bandage. He was wobbly, but the walking cast on his leg made a limping shuffle possible. He hobbled across to Estios and looked up into the elf's face.
"You're not going to kill her." Estios curled his lip; he put his hand on Sam's chest and shoved him backward. Sam landed in a chair with an agonizing shock that sent a wave of blackness and wheeling lights across his vision. He was glad he had fallen in the cushioned chair; hitting the floor or a wall might have caused him to pass out. He didn't think Estios would have cared.
"You're too emotionally involved, Verner. I will assume that the painkillers have fogged your reasoning, and overlook your criminal shortsightedness. She stopped being your sister the day she grew fur." Estios surveyed the room. "We've wasted enough time. Put the drones on standby and transfer control to your van, rigger. Priest, you'll stay here with the wounded. Everybody else, grab your gear. We're going hunting."
Willie looked to Sam. She had never liked Estios and hated taking his orders. She seemed torn between her loyalty to Sam and the weight of the elf's arguments. Her eyes asked for a release from the burden of decision.
Seeing that no one else was going to stand up to Estios, Sam gritted his teeth. There was a table next to the chair, and he grabbed it, hoping to take some of the pressure off his ribs as he attempted to stand. Pain rocked him as he tried, and he collapsed back into the chair.
Dodger was across the room and crouched at Sam's side in an instant. The elf used one hand to steady Sam in the chair while his deft fingers adjusted controls on Sam's torso wrap. There was a brief hiss as more gas pumped into the bandage's tubes to increase its rigidity.
"He's going too far, Teresa," Dodger said. "This is a dangerous plan."
"If you're scared, alley runner, you can stay behind. We'll be playing in the real world where people get really hurt. You wouldn't like it. Why don't you go hide in your electron fantasies?'' Estios took a step toward the couch and held out his hand to Teresa.
Dodger stepped forward. "Don't go with him, Teresa."
Teresa stared past Sam, obviously meeting Dodger's gaze. Sam could see wavering emotions on her face. Dodger was out of Sam's line of sight, but he felt Dodger's tension through the elf's grip on his arm. The grip tightened as Teresa dropped her eyes and took Estios's hand.
E
stios helped her up, then bent, retrieved her weapon, and tossed it to her. All the while Estios grinned at Dodger like a kid who had won a prize at a carnival.
"Get a move on, rigger," he said, slapping a hand against the back of Willie's chair. "We've got vermin to exterminate."
Estios reached for his own Steyr, which leaned against the table with the rigger board, and froze as a new voice entered the conversation.
"Touch it and your boss will need a new number one, Ice Eyes."
Hart's voice was hoarse. Her eyes, sunken and dark ringed, were open and burned with fever. Their gaze was fixed on Estios. Her left arm lay across her body, which took most of the weight of the gun she held. She pointed the muzzle at Estios. Sam had no idea where she had gotten the weapon, but she wasn't in any shape to use it effectively. He thought he noticed a slight tremor in her hand.
Estios looked at her, his face stony. Then, apparently dismissing the threat, he started to reach for his gun.
Thunder boomed in the room. Estios recoiled as splinters of wood exploding from the table drew blood from his outstretched hand.
"That was your one warning," Hart said. Her complexion was paler, and fresh sweat plastered locks of hair to her forehead. The recoil from the shot had obviously caused her pain. Her hand shook visibly now. Estios rubbed at his small wounds with the thumb of his uninjured hand.
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