Dragons & Dwarves (54 page)
Authors: S. Andrew Swann
“What about?”
“Shhh . . .”
She pulled me up a flight of stairs, past framed portraits of Buddha and Krishna, past a little statue of Shiva dancing, and into one of the upstairs bedrooms.
I stumbled in a few steps as she closed and bolted the door. She hung an amulet on the doorknob and said, “There.”
Her voice echoed in the windowless room.
“Mind telling me what’s going on?”
The room was empty. No furniture, no carpet, only a bare bulb in a light socket in the ceiling. Even the closet door was gone, leaving the closet an empty niche in one corner of the room.
On the hardwood floor was a large circle of glyphs drawn in a cursive feminine hand. “We should be safe in here,” Nina said.
“Safe from what?”
Instead of answering, she pulled a tarot card out of her pocket and handed it to me.
The Devil . . .
The Devil . . .
“What is this?” Fragments of my nightmare came to mind, looking at the card. The massive stone throne, the dwarves chained to its base.
“Behold the cost of defying me!”
“The visions are worse,” Nina said to me. “They keep coming. They’re warning you . . .”
“Warning
me?
What do you mean?”
me?
What do you mean?”
Nina grabbed me. “They’re
your
visions. Now, you’re seeing them yourself. I saw them first because I’m sensitive, and I work close to you.”
your
visions. Now, you’re seeing them yourself. I saw them first because I’m sensitive, and I work close to you.”
I backed up and shook my head. “Whoa, Nina, I’m no seer. I’m the most thoroughly mundane man you’ll ever meet. I normally don’t even report on the stuff.”
She stared at me, “You’ve seen them.”
I swallowed and looked down at the card.
“The Oracle can reach anyone, and being exposed to high concentrations of mana can bring on a sensitivity . . .”
“I haven’t been . . .”
Bullshit, Kline. The dwarf mailed you a package of salt intense enough to throw Kawata’s spectrometer out of whack. That ring at the
Nazgûl
probably wasn’t cornstarch, and you
tasted
a sample of what the dwarves were using last night, you Brainiac. God himself only knows what kind of power was flowing through Magetech corporate headquarters . . .
Nazgûl
probably wasn’t cornstarch, and you
tasted
a sample of what the dwarves were using last night, you Brainiac. God himself only knows what kind of power was flowing through Magetech corporate headquarters . . .
I must have zoned out because Nina was shaking me. “Did you hear what I said?”
“What?”
“You can
not
let your daughter come here. Not before the Tower falls.”
not
let your daughter come here. Not before the Tower falls.”
The Tower?
I hadn’t seen that yet.
I hadn’t seen that yet.
“Fine, fine.” I held up my hands.
“What?”
“I’ve told you, it’s under control. We’ve already postponed her visit.”
Nina’s face went white. “She
was
going to . . .”
was
going to . . .”
“One o’clock flight this afternoon.”
“So close . . .” She turned away from me and started shaking.
“It’s all right, we bumped her trip.”
She kept shaking her head. “No.”
I put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s all right.”
She spun around and said, “No, it isn’t.
Call her.
”
Call her.
”
“What?”
“Call her and tell her not to come.”
“What is this, Nina? What does my daughter have to do with it?”
“She won’t be safe as long as he—”
She stopped talking and the only sound was the house creaking and settling around us.
“As long as who? What?” I looked around. “We went over this yesterday. You said you discovered something. What was it?”
She stepped away from me, shaking her head. “No.” She looked up at the corners of the room. The creaking was getting worse. Small trails of dust drifted down from the ceiling. It suddenly began to feel very warm in the house.
Nina’s muscles went tense and her eyes rolled back in her head.
“Nina?” I reached for her.
Bad move.
My hand touched her shoulder and I felt a shock as if someone laid a two-by-four across my face. I slammed all the way backward into the far wall, cracking the plaster and bruising my kidneys.
“Annoying little bitch.”
The voice coming out of Nina’s throat was deep, masculine, and somehow, familiar.
The room darkened as the single light bulb began to fail. The light turned red as the glyphs on the floor burst into flame.
“Maxwell is mine, and you cannot keep me from him.”
“Maxwell is mine, and you cannot keep me from him.”
I tried to push myself upright, but I felt a spasm of pain in my lower back and my legs slid out from under me. “Who are you?” I managed through clenched teeth.
“You know who I am. I am the answer to your question.”
“What have you done to Nina?”
“Only accepted her invitation.”
“Show yourself.”
The laugh was inhuman and soul wrenching.
“I will show myself to you soon enough, when you come begging to serve me.”
“I will show myself to you soon enough, when you come begging to serve me.”
“Let her go.”
The thing laughed again, and the room was plunged into darkness as the flaming glyphs died out. The lightbulb flickered back on in time for me to see Nina collapse on the charred protective circle.
“Shit.” This time I managed to get myself up on my hands and knees to get over to her. She was breathing okay, and my rudimentary knowledge of first aid allowed me to find a pulse.
“Nina? Can you hear me?”
She stared straight ahead, at the ceiling. I shook her shoulder gently. No response.
“God damn it.”
I pulled out my cell phone and dialed 9-1-1.
Not wanting to deal with the Emergency Room, I didn’t tell the paramedics about literally throwing my back out. I watched, more or less helplessly, as they examined Nina, and carried her out to a waiting ambulance. I called Columbia, knowing full well I’d get her voice mail on a Saturday, and left a message for her about Nina.
Then I called HR at the
Press,
hoping they had the right emergency contacts for her.
Press,
hoping they had the right emergency contacts for her.
I didn’t even know if she was married.
I sat in the Volkswagen for a long time before I could get my head around what had happened. This wasn’t just Mazurich and a dead dwarf. Somehow this was tied to me, and my daughter.
It took a long time for Margaret to answer the phone.
“Hello?” Her voice was cracked and hoarse, I could tell that I hadn’t woken her up. I heard someone in the background. I heard her stage whisper to someone, “It’s her father.”
I felt the bottom fall out of my stomach. “Margaret? What’s wrong?”
“Kline, my God, I was going to call you—I’m still talking to the police.”
No.
“What’s the matter?”
She was whispering again, “No, he’s my ex-husband, and he’s in Cleveland.”
“Margaret, what’s the matter? Is Sarah all right? What happened?”
“We had a fight, a bad one . . .”
“Is she all right?”
“I think so, but—”
“But what?”
“She ran away.”
My hand was shaking. This couldn’t be happening. We had safely dealt with it.
Margaret was still talking. “. . .while I was asleep. I thought it was all settled. But she took the car. I don’t know where she went. The police are here.”
I felt like Macbeth watching the trees walking toward the rampart walls. “I know where she went,” I whispered.
“What?”
“Send the cops to the airport.”
“I don’t understand. I canceled the flight myself. She couldn’t—”
“Trust me,” I said. “She’s going to try and come here.”
Margaret suddenly sounded suspicious. “How are you so sure?”
“Because that would be the absolutely worst thing that could happen.”
“Kline?”
“Get the cops to check the airport. If we’re lucky, the flight hasn’t left yet. You can’t let her come here.”
“Now you’re scaring me.”
You should be scared.
“I have to check some things on my end here. Call me immediately once you find anything, okay?”
“She didn’t tell you anything, did she?”
“I wish she had.”
“I’ll let you know.”
“Thanks.”
When I hung up, all I could think about was the last image from my nightmare; the Devil’s hand opening, revealing the bloody, broken body of my daughter . . .
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I
FOLLOWED the ambulance to St. Vincent Charity Hospital. I had a desperate sick feeling that I was somehow responsible for what happened to Nina. When I came in asking about her, they stuck me in a little waiting room filled with hotel paintings, a phone, a box of tissues, and a Bible.
FOLLOWED the ambulance to St. Vincent Charity Hospital. I had a desperate sick feeling that I was somehow responsible for what happened to Nina. When I came in asking about her, they stuck me in a little waiting room filled with hotel paintings, a phone, a box of tissues, and a Bible.
Great . . .
I called the
Press
again, but they hadn’t had any luck contacting Nina’s family. They’d already left several messages, but her only emergency contacts were her parents, who lived in Minnesota.
Press
again, but they hadn’t had any luck contacting Nina’s family. They’d already left several messages, but her only emergency contacts were her parents, who lived in Minnesota.
Another émigré to the exotic mana-soaked shores of Lake Erie.
I didn’t know much about Nina’s background, but I could guess at it. Mana likes ritual and pattern, and has a habit of infecting, or adapting to, existing codes and patterns. Anyone who had studied magic or the occult before the Portal opened had a leg up. A lot of people came here because their old magical studies suddenly had practical applications.
Nina had probably gone through the obligatory New Age experimentation in college. A little tarot here, a little cabalism there, some Golden Dawn everywhere . . .
Made me think of the students Dr. Shafran complained about.
I sat in a plaid lounge chair, picked up the house phone, and tried to call Dr. Shafran. I figured if anyone knew what the hell I might be dealing with, he’d be the guy.
No such luck. Of course he wasn’t in the office. And I ran his voice mail out of tape three times trying to explain what I wanted. At the end of the third message, I tried to get a grip on myself.
“Okay,” I said to myself, “panicking won’t help anything. Act like a damn professional.”
If the guy wasn’t at work on Saturday, I’d get his home number.
Easier said than done.
The guy wasn’t just absent from normal directory assistance, even the people I knew in the phone company couldn’t pull a listing for him.
In the end, I needed to call Quint anyway.
“What you got for me?”
“Kline, your doctor has a long file. You want the long version or the short one?”
I looked up at the clock and shook my head. “I have time.”
Magetech wasn’t a public company, but the pile of money Quint was able to trace was two zeros beyond what Mazurich had been hiding. Magetech had more patents than a Catholic schoolgirl convention, and the guy’s name was on every one.
However, for someone researching the effects of magic on the world, Dr. Pretorious located himself safely outside its influence. He bought a house in a golf community south of Columbus about three years ago and secluded himself there. I had an address, as well as the market value of the residence—seven figures, and it didn’t start with a one.
After Quint had worked backward through Pretorious’ employment history, and a background check that the CIA would call anal, I asked him, “Could you do a quick look up of another doctor for me?”
“Name?”
“Dr. Newman Shafran, he works at Case Western.”
“Hmm. You shopping around, Kline? These guys are probably too old for you.”
“I’m just looking for a home phone.”
Quint made a melodramatic sigh. “If you insist. Give me a moment.”
I heard typing, then a muffled curse. “Can you spell that name for me?”
I did.
“Give me a moment.” Quint muttered something unpleasant. As he muttered, a doctor walked into the room.
“Hold on,” I said to Quint, who wasn’t listening. I looked up at my visitor. “How is she?”
The doctor was an Indian man about ten years younger than I was. “Medically she’s in no danger at the moment. I understand you were present during the attack?”
I nodded, lowering the phone. “Is she awake?”
The doctor shook his head, “I’m sorry. She’s unresponsive.”
“What’s the matter?”
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