by Ryk E. Spoor
She looked surprised at that, but then her gaze sharpened. “Jason, why were you there yesterday evening? I know it wasn’t just to talk about your love life.”
“You’re right.” I gave her the whole story along with everything Verne had said. Just as I finished, the phone rang. It was Lieutenant Reisman. She’d guessed where I had to be tonight. She was calling from a pay phone, so I took the number and called her back. “What’s up, Renee?”
“Remember our federal friend? Well, his business associates showed up. We’ve been told to butt out; national security and all that.”
“Well, we could have predicted that. SOP.”
Renee snorted. “Bullcrap, Wood. Usually the feds cooperate with the locals; they don’t want to piss us off. When they go into a total stonewall like this, they’re not kidding around, and there’s something big involved.”
“So why call me?”
“Because I know you, Wood. You dropped into the middle of it and you never give up on anything. I haven’t told them you’re in the picture. No one else on the site really saw you except the ME, and he’s so close-mouthed he wouldn’t say if he saw his own mother at her funeral unless he was under oath. I’m just warning you about what kind of trouble you could be in if you keep poking into this.”
“What about you?”
There was a pause, then an explosive, short laugh. “Yeah, you know me, too.”
“Can you get me the ME’s report?”
She thought for a moment. “I’ll have to figure out some way to weasel it out of him without alerting the feds, but yeah, I think I can. So what are you going to do for me?”
“My job. Get you information.” I smiled slowly. “Don’t you think it might help if we can find out why they’re so worried?”
She hesitated. “It sure would. But I don’t want to know how you get it.”
“Right. Look, why don’t you come over for dinner tomorrow, if you’re not too busy? I should have something by then, and hopefully they won’t try to listen in. We can set up some way to talk safely then.”
“Okay. And, Jason,” her tone shifted, “be careful. This is dangerous stuff we’re playing with.”
“I know. Bye.”
I looked up at Syl. One glance froze me. She had that deep-eyed, deadly serious look again. Her “feeling” look. After the last few times, I’d learned to trust those feelings with my life. “What is it, Syl?”
“It’s bad, Jason. Very bad.” She shivered. “More people are going to die before this is over.”
CHAPTER 22
Three Conversations, One Problem
I got back to my house, opened the door, and went to the kitchen. A few minutes later, sandwich and soda next to me, I booted up my terminal program. I needed to contact Manuel Garcia O’Kelly Davis. Manuel was actually a fairly high-placed military intelligence analyst. I thought he was Air Force, but there was no way to be sure. I sent him a secured e-mail, asking for a conference. He promptly agreed, and we set up the doubly secured relay, with me supplying a few bells and whistles that would make anyone trying to trace us end up chasing their own tails through the telecommunications network. As per our long-established habits, neither of us used the other’s real name; to him, I was “Mentor of Arisia,” and he remained “Manuel.”
>Hello, Mentor. You ready for the apocalypse? Less than six months to go!<<
I snorted. We often joked around about the “Y2K” problem, but it hadn’t been a joke for a lot of people I knew. It was a costly problem that people had put off for years; as a result, in the last few months, people were scrambling to put the last patches in. Not that the disasters predicted were likely to happen, but it was a major pain in the butt. I typed back:
>*MY* computer software is up to date. It’s you guys in the government that have to worry about your antiquated systems with two-digit date fields.<<
>True dat. What’s up?<<
>Got a problem. You have time?<<
>Two hours enough?<<
>Should be.<<
I filled him in on the situation, leaving out the gory details and concentrating on the NSA factors.
>Can you find out what their angle is?<<
>Christ. You don’t ask for much, do you. Look, I can check into it, but you’d do better to just drop out, you know?<<
>I can’t. It’d nag at me forever.<<
>I know the feeling. :) Just remember, anything I tell you, I didn’t tell you. Right?<<
>Right.<<
I signed off, then finally got on to one of the underground boards; one run by a pirate and hacker that I knew pretty well.
>Hello, Demon? You there?<<
>Readin’ you loud and clear, Mentor old buddy. You slumming?<<
>Looking for info, as usual. You still keep up on the doings of the rich and infamous?<<
>Best I can, you can bet on it.<<
The Demon was a damn good hacker—almost on a par with the legendary Jammer—and very well informed. He kept an eye on criminal doings not merely on the Net, but throughout the world. He viewed his piracy as a matter of free information distribution; since I make my living by distributing information and getting paid for that service, I found myself simultaneously agreeing and disagreeing with him. Nonetheless, we got along pretty well since the Demon absolutely hated the real Darksiders—people who destroyed others’ work. To his mind, copying information was one thing. Destroying or corrupting it was another thing entirely.
>Demon, what’s going on now that might be bothering the feds?<<
>You talking big or little?<<
>Big, but not like countries going to war; NSA stuff.<<
>Hold on. Lemme think.<<
I waited.
>Okay, there are about three things I can think of; but lemme ask, did something happen in your area?<<
>Yes, that’s how I got interested.<<
>Got you. That only leaves one. NSA and the other agencies have been checking your general area trying to locate a real nasty Darksider who calls himself Gorthaur. He’s a total sleaze. None of the respectable hackers or crackers will deal with him, but no one’s really got the guts to tell him to kiss off. There are a lot of ugly rumors about him. Or her, no one’s really sure either way. Gorthaur’s been heavy into espionage and industrial spying and sabotage. A real prize.<<
>He ever sign on your board?<<
>He did until I found out who he was. Far as I know, I’m the only one to tell him what I thought of him. I told him that he’d better not log back on ’cuz if I ever got anything on him I’d turn him over to the cops so fast it’d make his chips spin.<<
>Bet he didn’t like that.<<
>He told me it wasn’t healthy to get in his way. I told him to save the threats for the kiddies.<<
I frowned at that.
>Look, Demon, if it turns out that this Gorthaur is part of what I’m involved in, you’d better take his warning seriously. There’s already one corpse and the place is crawling with NSA.<<
>I’ll be careful then.<<
I logged off, shut the system down, and sat back. Then I got up. I turned around. A tall, angular, dark figure loomed over me, scarcely a foot away.
“Holy CRAP!” I jumped back, tripped over the chair, dropped my glass, fell. My head smacked into the edge of the table and I flopped to the floor and just lay there as the red mist cleared.
“My apologies, Jason. Let me help you up.” Verne Domingo pulled me to my feet as though I were a doll.
I pushed him away; he let go. “Christ! What in hell did you think you were doing? You scared me into next week!” I rubbed the already growing lump on my skull.
“I have said I was sorry. I did not wish to call you via phone; the government has ears, after all. And coming in person would call just as much attention. I had only just materialized when you turned, and I had no chance to warn you.”
“Okay, Okay. Sorry I yelled.” I started for the kitchen, towards the freezer.
“Sit, Jason. I will take car
e of that.” He took the hand towel from the countertop, rinsed it, dumped several ice cubes into it. Then he folded the towel into a bundle and squeezed. I heard splintering noises as the ice was crushed. “There. Put that on the swelling.”
I did. The cold helped, even when it started to ache. “What’d you want to see me for?”
“To explain, my friend.” He stood with his back to the refrigerator, stiff and somehow sad. “The story you told me last night . . . it had very disturbing elements in it, very disturbing indeed. I had to check them before I could believe what my heart knew was the truth. Now I must tell you what is happening here, and for you to understand, you must hear a little history.
“Vampires are among the most powerful of what you would call the supernatural races, but—as I am sure you have guessed—we are not the only such. Most have . . .” he hesitated, then went on, “. . . either long since died out or else found some way to leave this world that is no longer congenial to them, but a few, either through preference or necessity, still live on. My people are, on the whole, cautious not to arouse the awareness of you mortals, and this suits us. Bound as we are to the world in which we are born, we cannot leave, and so we live as best we can without doing that which could rouse you who now rule it to pursue us.
“There was another race of beings, however, which was not so circumspect. They did not reproduce as we do—by converting mortals; they reproduced themselves as do most races, and this is perhaps why they had less sympathy for your people. But more likely, they lacked sympathy because it was not in their nature; for they preyed on us as well.” He looked at me steadily. “Your people call them werewolves.”
I blinked. “Oh, no. Not again.”
“I am afraid so. You have stumbled into the realm of the paranormal once more.”
Vaguely, I had the feeling that there was something missing—something Verne was not telling me. But it wasn’t central; the main points, I was sure, were the real thing. But something else wasn’t quite . . . right. Well, maybe he’d clear that up later. I grimaced. “What was that line from Die Hard 2? ‘How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?’ Look, how could werewolves prey on you? I mean, you guys are awfully hard to kill and once you die, well, you go to dust, at least the older ones. Klein took several days. Not much to eat there. Besides, couldn’t you just turn around and eat them?”
“We are not as invulnerable as you think.” He hesitated. “The truth is that it is not merely wood which can harm us. Wood harms us because it was once living. Any object composed of living or formerly living matter can harm us. Thus, werewolves could kill us with their formidable natural weaponry. As for the feeding . . . your writers have often glimpsed the truth. They did indeed consume flesh; but more, they fed on raw emotions. Fear and despair, terror and rage, these things strengthened them; and when their victims finally died, they fed, directly, on the life force, the soul if you will, as it passed from the body. Nor could we return the favor. Their blood-scent was enticing, true; but any attempt to drain them only succeeded in slaying both parties. We immortals were a rare delicacy to them. We hid ourselves well, but they eventually found ways to locate us. We fought them off on occasion, but they became ever more devious and effective over the centuries, leaving us alone for long enough that we began to feel safe, then returning to feast upon those who did not know their peril and were unready to defend themselves against the monsters.
“That threat accomplished what none of our talking had managed before; all the different . . . groups of vampires united against the lycanthropes, and waged a long and bitter war. In the end we destroyed them. I myself confronted the last, and greatest, of the breed, and I slew him with great pleasure. He had been terrorizing the city of London while using a name which he knew would taunt me.”
“Vlad Dracul.”
He nodded.
“And now you wonder if you really killed him at all.”
“No.” He sat slowly. “I do not wonder at all. I know now that I did not kill him; that somehow he survived what I had believed were mortal wounds.”
“You’d better tell me everything about these things. Especially how to kill them.”
“Silver is the only way—at least the only way that you could make use of. I do not know in what manner, but the metal somehow disrupts their internal balance. Both teeth and claws, in their lupine form, are a crystalline substance of great toughness. Their strength is immense, their cunning formidable, and their ability to shift shape, though confined to a vaguely wolflike monstrous form on the one hand, is unlimited in the human range; they can be anyone at all. They do not fear night or day, nor does the phase of the moon have any effect upon them. They also have a talent similar to my own to charm and cloud other minds. They do not have my people’s ability to dematerialize, but they can prevent us from using it if they get a hold on us.”
“Ugh. Tell me, do they become stronger with age like you vampires?”
“I am afraid so.”
“And this one was the biggest, oldest, baddest of the werewolves when you fought him?”
“Quite. I was not alone, however.”
“Not alone? You mean you couldn’t handle him by yourself?” The thought was terrifying. I knew how strong Klein had been, how hard he was to kill, and since then I’d seen what Verne was capable of; trying to imagine something powerful enough to beat a vampire as ancient as Verne . . .
He showed his fangs in a humorless grin. “I will admit that we never found out. I had two companions . . .” he hesitated again before continuing, “. . . both of them . . . leaders of their own clans or families of vampires. Though normally enemies, we realized that these creatures were more of a threat to us all. We ambushed him, all striking at once with silver knives I had prepared, and threw his body in the Thames, the knives embedded in the corpse so that his people would not find him in time to have any chance to save him. So swift were we that he never had a chance to strike back.”
“Marvelous.” I shook my head. “Well, at least you’ve eased my mind on one thing.”
“That being . . . ?”
“I hate coincidences. I don’t believe in them. Now I know why he’s ended up here.” I looked across the table. “He’s been tracking you. And he’s going to kill you if he can.”
Verne Domingo nodded slowly.
CHAPTER 23
Remembering Old Times
“Okay, Jason, what’ve you got?”
That was Renee, straight to the point. “A whole lot. But first, come here; there’s someone I want you to meet.”
She followed me to the living room. Verne rose from the red chair, bowed as I introduced them. “Renee Reisman, Verne Domingo.”
She didn’t shake hands. “Jason, we’ve had our eye on this man for some time. I’d like to know just what his connection is with you.”
“I shall explain, my lady,” Verne said. “Look at me,” he continued in a low but commanding voice.
Reflexively she shot a glance into his eyes—and froze.
He stepped closer, touched her temple gently with his right hand. He gazed intensely at her for several seconds. “Remember,” he said.
Renee’s eyes widened. A choked scream burst from her lips, and she staggered back, sagged, pale and shaking, onto my couch. “Oh dear God . . .” She closed her eyes, massaged her temples, and took several ragged breaths. Finally she raised her head. “I . . . I remember now. But until now, it was like those memories didn’t exist.” She stared at Verne, still shaking.
“My sincerest apologies, Renee—may I call you Renee? Those memories were still there; merely locked away, as you requested. But Jason has convinced me that we need your aid, and we both knew that you must have your full memory to help us.”
The old Renee was reasserting herself, albeit slowly. “That bad, huh?” She raised an eyebrow at me. “I assume that his being here means that he isn’t our killer.”
“You’re right.”
She turned back to Verne. “
Okay, Domingo. Now that my brain is back, this had better be real good. Because,” she shivered again, “I don’t think I’ll be able to go through that again. Having my memory switched on and off like a light . . .”
Verne smiled, the gentlest expression I’d ever seen him use; his fangs didn’t show. “Milady, you showed courage far greater than mine to undergo that treatment once; neither of us either desired or expected that you would once more ask to forget.”
“Damn straight.” She ran her fingers through her hair, took a deep breath, and crossed her legs. “All right, let’s have it.”
CHAPTER 24
Gone and Dead
I logged on and checked; I had a secured e-mail waiting. I pulled it up onscreen.
The message decoded just as though Manuel had sent it . . . but it wasn’t from Mannie at all. That was so close to impossible that, for a moment, I couldn’t do anything except gape. Then I reread the signature at the bottom, and understood.
Mentor (or should I say, Jason?): I’m sorry to tell you that Manuel has gotten himself into a bit of trouble by poking his nose into this. He doesn’t have anywhere near the necessary clearance. He’s being debriefed right now, but I’d suggest you not contact him for a while; not only is he more than slightly peeved at you, but any more contact from the outside might be seen as seriously amiss by his superiors.
Since he emphatically assured me that you’re too stubborn to be frightened off, and because we happen to be kindred spirits in a way, I’ll give you what information I can. But let me warn you: this is dangerous. You and everyone you know could get killed if you play these games. So give serious consideration to just dropping it.
“Vlad Dracul” is apparently another alias being used by an independent operator called “Gorthaur.” Gorthaur plays no favorites; he’s been bypassing security and penetrating installations on five continents. Very rarely does he take direct credit for his actions except for those which he perpetrates on the Net—that’s where he gets his name.