Agent Wright began an animated discussion with a tiny wisp of a man in a museum guard’s uniform. She towered over the poor guy, who kept jerking back as she poked him in the chest. After a moment, she pointed out the door where I stood and noticed me standing there. She waved me in and finished up with the guard. He left, wide-eyed and sweating profusely. It could have been from the chewing out or the fact that it was about four degrees hotter than the sun in there with all the people and electronics. Everyone was sweating, including Agent Wright.
“St. James, grab me a copy of the security footage for the past seventy-two hours,” she said to an older, bald—but well-built—African-American man with a bushy gray mustache, who was suffering a lot less from the heat than everyone around him. He was also dressed in a museum guard’s uniform. He and the other guards appeared to be at the beck and call of the agents in the room. “And bring it to me outside. It’s too damn hot in here, and I need some air.”
She glanced in my direction and arched her eyebrows as one corner of her mouth edged up in a partial smile, which I took to mean she wasn’t entirely irritated to see me. “Follow me,” she said, walking out past me.
I followed her outside to an area behind one of the museum’s fountains, grateful to be out of there. Again, everyone watched me the entire time we were walking. Enough was enough already. If I wasn’t already so self-conscious, and if it had been anyone other than Agent Wright, I might have asked if there was anything odd about me. Instead I just stood there, paranoid.
Fortunately, within a few minutes, the guard named St. James made his way out to us with a thumb drive, which he handed to Wright, and then disappeared back inside.
Agent Wright eyed me and sighed heavily, clearly worn out and frustrated. “Did you find anything helpful?” she asked hopefully, handing me the drive.
“Not in so many words, Agent Wright. No.” I was glad to have something to focus on other than my paranoia. Unfortunately, my ego kicked in instead. “I highly doubt this was the work of terrorists, but I expect I’ll see a lot more on these disks. I have a few people I need to talk with here in town before I leave. I promise I’ll call you with any information that may help you. I appreciate the help, and so does the Metis Foundation.” I was trying to sound more valuable to impress Agent Wright.
“It’s not my first time working with the Foundation. But it is the first time I was told to accommodate one of their investigators by the Undersecretary of Homeland Security for National Protection and Programs. Clearly, somebody trusts you.”
Athena had some pretty impressive contacts. Agent Wright smiled at me, and despite what was going on around us, my pulse quickened just a bit. Then I got self-conscious again and figured I should quit while I was ahead.
“Thanks. I’ll be in touch.” I started to head back toward the liaison coordinator’s trailer to get my ID back. I glanced over my shoulder and noticed that Agent Wright was watching me walk away.
“Um, Mr. Dore,” she called, which brought a grin to my face. Inside, I was pumping my fist.
“Mr. Dore, wait,” she said, walking after me.
I was simultaneously excited and terrified by the idea that she might actually like me. While at one time in my life women had practically thrown themselves at me, over the last few hundred years I’d rarely been pursued by women who didn’t want to kill me. I stopped and grinned back at her, trying to act coy.
When she got to me, she reached around and pulled something off my back. What the hell? She smirked into her hand, trying to cover up her amusement, and handed me an old decal—some sort of industrial warning placard. It said, “Danger: Gas Vent Below,” in bold red letters on a white background.
My mouth fell open as I grabbed for the decal. She just laughed. Despite being disheveled and sweaty, her laugh revealed how attractive she really was. Even though she was laughing at me, it was worth it for the briefest of moments. Then I stared back down at the sign and thought, Fucking Hob.
“Tha-thank you, Agent Wright,” I said, trying not to croak.
Fucking Hob. I tried to get out of there as fast as I could and immediately ran into some poor tech carrying a heavy plastic case. I managed to remain upright, but the tech spun around and fell, dropping the case with a thud that made everyone in the immediate area stop and take notice. I tried to retain what little dignity I had left by helping the guy up before I continued on my way. That was what I got for upsetting a brownie.
After I retrieved my ID, I used the walk back to my hotel to regain my composure. It wasn’t the first time a Hob had screwed with me, and it wasn’t likely to be the last. It’s just what they do. Still, fucking Hob.
CHAPTER 8
Once I got back to the hotel and finally checked in, I was a little surprised to see a room that was pleasant, slightly outdated, and nowhere near as luxurious as I’d expected, given its price. Of course, my room was at the lower end of the hotel’s price scale and didn’t have a view of Central Park. The whole space was decorated in pinks and tans, and the color scheme really set my teeth on edge. In fact, the only part of the room that justified the price was the immense and opulent marble bathroom that was like something right out of a spa.
I pulled out my laptop and got comfortable at the desk. I took a few minutes to make a list of cameras I needed to pay attention to and inserted the thumb drive. The drive had over sixteen gigabytes of data on it, so it took the better part of an hour to find the views I wanted, but once I did, I began with the earliest footage from the regular camera nearest the Cup’s display case. I let it play, fast-forwarding through the moments when no one was in view. Over the course of the next few hours, nothing more than people passed through the frame, many of them stopping to view the display that contained the Cup. Even though I could see through veils, I couldn’t see things on film that the film couldn’t pick up, so I was hoping that whatever had taken the Cup wasn’t covering itself.
Finally, after about six hours of watching without a break, an interesting detail showed up in the field of view. The time stamp on the image read four o’clock in the afternoon two days ago—the day before the explosion. Nothing had entered the screen for several minutes, and then two emaciated, long-limbed, small humanoid creatures bolted from the Asian Art Gallery overlooking the main stairs, through the area with the Cup’s display, and down toward the Greek and Roman art on the second floor. If I didn’t know what I was seeing, I might have mistaken them for ugly kids, but I knew instantly that they were Hobgoblins. Less than a minute later, a tall figure appeared, slowly making its way along an identical path to that of the Hobgoblins until it stopped at the glass cases in the gallery. It didn’t walk so much as shamble.
Once it was completely in frame, I froze the image. I couldn’t see an aura or any sign of magic in the video, but it definitely was not human. It might have been at one time, but it sure wasn’t anymore.
The figure was well over six and a half feet tall, was dressed in an expensive suit, and had to weigh close to three hundred pounds. Its arms hung limply at its sides, unnaturally still, and it plodded along as if it were being pushed and might fall over at any time. It might have been someone possessed by a controlling entity, or it could have been a zombii or even some sort of golem. If I’d seen the figure in person, I would have known for sure.
In possessions, a spirit resided within a host, but the host remained the dominant figure. I saw possession as two pictures superimposed over each other with one clearer than the other. Zombiis, on the other hand, were simply people controlled by magic, so even though they acted like possessed people, I’d only have seen the one figure surrounded by a magical haze. Golems were creatures made entirely from other objects, sometimes including parts of dead bodies, and held together by powerful symbols and sigils that caused the entire creature to give off an aura of magical energy.
Given that the creature had made it
into the museum without much scrutiny, I seriously doubted it was a golem. Both the zombii and the possession would account for the “foul, unnatural magic” the Hob had claimed to feel, however.
I let the video run and watched the thing stand in front of the Cup without moving—not just standing still but eerily motionless. Statues could have taken a lesson from the guy. The nonaction occurred for ten minutes before the image became pixilated and nearly blacked out. It scrambled for a few minutes and then came back. As far as I could tell, the giant form never even shifted. Finally, roughly a minute after the camera fritzed, the shambling mound lumbered back toward the main staircase. I checked the time stamp, searched the other cameras, and found him walking down the stairs. I kept switching camera views to see if the guy interacted with anyone or anything along the way, but he didn’t. I couldn’t help feeling as though I was missing something.
Shifting my focus, I viewed the grainy images from the infrared cameras. There was only one IR camera near the collection that included the Cup. Unlike most Forward Looking Infrared—or FLIR—cameras, the ones used by the museum were set up to record in gray scale with hot images showing as bright white blobs on a cooler gray or black background. People were vaguely humanoid white blobs in the images, but the cameras could not record detailed pictures, just temperature differences.
I matched the time stamp on the IR camera to the one that showed the shambling giant. He appeared as a massive white ball in the frame, far larger and less humanoid than he would have if he were human. He was either giving off so much heat he would have been a walking furnace, or it was an energy signature. Given people would have noticed a two-hundred-degree furnace walking past them, I settled on the idea that the creature was giving off a huge amount of energy. Either way, he was decidedly not human. That meant my theory of it being either a zombii or a possession was wrong. I was back at square one.
As I watched, the white blob steadily increased in size until another significantly smaller humanoid figure appeared at the edge of the frame, coming from the main staircase. Then, as the smaller form approached the giant, the white blurs of both figures began to merge until most of the screen flashed white. This point in time matched the spot at which the regular security camera faltered. Whatever the smaller form was, it was veiling itself from normal view but not masking its heat signature. And clearly, both figures were connected somehow. But what was I seeing? The footage was getting more and more confusing as I watched.
The image on the IR camera stayed mostly white for three full minutes, according to the time stamp on the footage, before softening back into two indistinct blobs and then to one sizable blob and a smaller humanoid one again. The humanoid form drifted back toward the main staircase and off screen, followed by the broader blob about a minute later, just as it had in the regular camera’s footage.
There were no IR cameras in the Great Hall or along the main staircase, so I couldn’t track the smaller form past that gallery. Using the regular camera footage, I searched every entrance and exit for unexplained openings and then tracked the giant form into and out of the Cup’s gallery and up and down the main staircase, through the Great Hall, and outside. Never once did it turn its head, look around, raise its arms, or do anything other than shamble. People nearby gave it a wide berth but paid it little attention beyond that.
Making some rough comparisons with relative heights from the two different cameras, I estimated the shorter figure was nearly two feet shorter than the shambling giant. I froze the best image of the giant I could find and e-mailed that to Athena along with a clip of the IR footage that showed the figures merge and then separate again. I also e-mailed the photo of the giant to Agent Wright, hoping she could get e-mail on her phone. Within minutes, I got a call from her.
“We saw this guy already,” she said in a businesslike tone. “All the cameras malfunction about the same time he’s in the area of the cup, but we can track him straight to and from the gallery upstairs but never around the site of the explosion. What’d you see?”
“Call it a hunch. Do me a favor. I assume you guys have facial-recognition software. Have your people do a search for this guy from noon until just before the explosion the day of the bombing. And based on your statement, I assume you guys consider the IR footage at the time he’s around the gallery upstairs completely useless?”
“In general, yeah. That is one big brick wall of an ungainly man, though,” she said, sounding a bit friendlier. “So you think this guy is involved?”
“I’m not sure if he was behind it, but he was definitely involved. He’s on camera in front of that missing cup for quite some time in footage from two days ago. I haven’t finished checking yet, but I’ll bet you dinner tonight he’s in front of it the day of the explosion, too. Run his face through your DHS databases to see if you find any matches, and let me know.”
“I will, and you’re on,” she said enthusiastically. Hopefully, it was the chance of having dinner with me, and not the possibility of a lead, that was making her giddy.
“I’ll be in touch if I find anything else,” I replied, grinning broadly, and then waited for her to hang up, feeling vindicated and oh, so much better about myself.
CHAPTER 9
The only thing left to do was to wait on Athena’s information. It was closing in on late afternoon, and I knew she would get back to me no matter the time of day, but if it wasn’t soon, I was going to have to cancel the next morning’s charter.
My thoughts shifted to the oddness of the scenario—the giant, shambling figure emanating massive amounts of energy and the smaller humanoid figure veiled from view. I ran through it over and over in my head for a few minutes, trying to think of what might be involved, when the little Hob’s cryptic word came to me—“we-kuff.” At the same instant, there was a knock at the door.
I answered the door and was only somewhat surprised to see Athena standing there. The instant appearances were more impressive when she did them across multiple continents. She was dressed in a black pantsuit with a white shirt that somehow made her flaming red hair, which she was wearing in a tight braid on the back of her head, more vibrant than usual. Her eyes were brilliant blue and sparkled like gemstones, and the smile on her face suggested she was pleased with my progress.
“Oh, it’s you. Nice of you to drop in. I take it you got my e-mails?” I walked back to the seating area. I didn’t exactly invite her in, but I did leave the door open for her.
“Nice place you’ve chosen, Diomedes. I hope you don’t expect me to pay for it,” she said, following me across the room to sit down.
“Hey, it was the closest place I could find, and I’ll be out of here by morning. Besides, I know who, or actually, what, stole the Cup.”
“Do tell,” she said, eyeing me sideways, waiting for my answer.
“The big figure is a Wekufe, so I assume the small one in the IR footage that merges with him is his Kalku,” I said, trying to impress her.
“So it would seem,” she replied without changing her expression at all, as if what I’d said was common knowledge.
Undaunted by her reaction, I pressed on. “I know that a Wekufe is an entity composed of pure energy that functions like a battery and that a Kalku is a Mapuche Indian shaman powered by the Wekufe, but that’s about all I know. I’ve never faced them before.”
“The Kalku provides the Wekufe a human body and thereby a way to create havoc among the living. The pair bonds almost symbiotically. You should know that independent of the Wekufe, the Kalku might already be a powerful wizard, made even stronger by its association with the entity. And you cannot actually kill the Wekufe. You can only disperse its energy until it finds a new Kalku. Underestimate the pair at your own risk.” She got up, put her hands behind her back and began walking to the door.
Apparently, we were done here, so I followed, contemplating what she’d said. I’d f
aced magic users before, but none that were supercharged or carried a cup that could warn them I was coming—assuming the shaman knew how to use it. “Great. Any other good news?” I laughed, trying to hide my concern.
“I assume the human authorities believe the IR footage is anomalous?” she asked without turning back.
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“Can you find this Kalku and retrieve the Cup?” she asked with one hand on the doorknob.
“That’s why you pay me the big bucks,” I replied, shrugging my shoulders. In truth, it was routine. I was used to going after monsters; I just didn’t like it when they were unfamiliar ones.
She bowed her head curtly, and the terse set of her lips rose a little at one side into a knowing smirk, suggesting she believed me, but the squint of her eyes suggested I had better do this quickly. “Stay in touch, and let me know what else you find out,” she said, opening the door to step out.
“Oh, DHS said some terrorist group is claiming responsibility, so that’s the direction the official investigation will head,” I said, and she nodded as she walked down the hall.
My cell phone rang. It was Agent Wright. By the time I’d answered it and looked back up, Athena was gone. Typical.
“Agent Wright, did you find anything?”
“You could say that. First, the techs confirm that person was also present just before the explosion. He was in an area near the display case, not more than fifteen feet away, when the bomb exploded, and the cameras short-circuited. Second, we got a probable initial ID on the guy, but it doesn’t make sense, so we are continuing to check against all our databases.”
“What do you mean it doesn’t make sense? Did you get a match or not?”
“Well, yes and no,” she replied with some hesitation.
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