Hang Wire (22 page)

He sprints out of the apartment, back to the chase, leaving the door open behind him.

— XXIII —

Bob walked into the Market and Geary branch of Apollo Coffee, ignored the looks that he got, walked straight to the back. He’d magicked up a shirt of white linen, which he thought went with the faded jeans. His feet were still bare. Some of the patrons in the busy cafe recognized him and whispered to their friends. Others, never having seen Bob before, were less impressed.

At the back, Benny was waiting at a corner table. The cafe’s piped music was loud here, and most of the coffee drinkers and cake eaters and those tittering or tutting at Bob’s unorthodox appearance were toward the front, where the plate glass windows let in the San Francisco sunshine and people bustled around the busy counter and the harassed baristas.

There were two cups of coffee on the table. Bob sat and raised an eyebrow; Benny indicated the drink was for him.

“What is it with you and coffee?” asked Bob. He reached for the cup, turned it one hundred eight degrees by the handle, then sat back and didn’t touch it again.

Benny sipped her drink. “I like it. Tangun likes it too. Guess they don’t have Colombian free trade roast where he comes from.” She laughed.

Bob asked, “Where’s Ted?” and Benny stopped laughing.

“For a beach bum you’re not very chill,” said Benny.

Bob frowned. “This beach bum is a retired death god who is getting a little agitated,” he said. “Where’s Ted?”

Benny put down her cup, adjusted her cap, picked her cup up again. She held it close to her chin, both hands wrapped around the hot ceramic.

“He’s asleep.”

“Where is he asleep?”

“Dude, relax. My place. He’s safe there. Tangun put him under, and he’ll stay under until we want him to wake up.” Benny explained where Tangun had found him, and their rooftop conversation.

“So, he doesn’t know?” asked Bob. He leaned on the table with his elbows, ran both hands through his crisp hair. “And what’s with the acrobat thing? What’s his connection with the circus?”

Benny shrugged. “Nezha’s idea of a joke?”

“I never saw the point of tricksters. I mean, seriously.”

Benny sipped her coffee. “He’s absorbed at least part of Nezha’s power, but it’s totally fractured his mind. Physically, he seems fine. Mentally, well, I’m not sure how long he’s going to last before the damage becomes permanent.”

Bob sat up. “
Shit
,” he said. “Ted could be lost forever.”

Benny nodded. “I think so. I don’t know. This has never happened before, but it can’t be good. Tangun switched him into his own clothes, anyway. So he won’t get a reminder when he wakes up.”

“OK, good,” said Bob. “We need to get it out of him, pronto and we don’t have much time. Is Tangun ready?”

Benny pulled her baseball cap off and removed the tie from her ponytail. She shook her head, allowing her shoulder-length hair to fall free, then sat straight in her chair, her head titled until her face was covered by her hair. “Tangun the Founder is always ready,” she said, putting on a deep, mocking voice.

Bob raised an eyebrow. “Let’s go.”

“Well, shit.”

Benny’s apartment was empty, the front door open. Bob stood in the middle of the studio space, hands on hips, shaking his head. Benny had her cap in one hand, the other pulling at her ponytail.

“Sorry, dude,” she said. “I left him for, like, ten minutes.”

“Ten?”

“Maybe fifteen. But, Jesus, come on. Tangun put him to sleep. You can’t wake up from that, not ever.”

“Not unless you’ve got part of the power of a god inside you, right?”

Benny collapsed onto the couch. “Sorry, dude,” she said, her eyes on the floor.

“Come on.” Bob tapped Benny’s shoulder. “He can’t have got far.”

He disappeared through the door.

Tangun the Founder was a god, an ancient warrior king. Powerful, trustworthy, one of the best – one of Kanaloa’s few friends among the Heavenly Ones.

Benny, on the other hand, was young and carefree, a little green, a lot naïve, and had a hell of a lot to learn. As Bob stalked down the hallway, he wished that Tangun hadn’t made the choice he had, to depart the Earth completely and require a host to return to it, a host whose entire family tree stretching back generation upon generation had been shaped just for that purpose. Bob had stayed as he was: a god, albeit one in disguise. If Tangun had done the same, it would have made the situation easier. Then again, foreseeing the future was not one of Tangun’s – or Kanaloa’s – particular powers.

Bob only hoped they could find Ted, and soon.

— XXIV —

The Hang Wire Killer is just a person, just like everybody else. Highwire tells himself this, over and over. He also tells himself that the one thing that everybody has in common is
time.
There are only twenty-four hours in a day. Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton had twenty-four. William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens too. The President. The Pope. Everybody in the city, in the world.

Highwire wonders if Tangun the Founder has twenty-four hours available too, or whether it works differently for him. He mentioned there was another in the city. Highwire thought, at the time, he meant a friend, an ally.

Or… was he talking about the killer? Maybe the killer has more time too, if Tangun does.

Highwire curses himself. Such speculation is worthless. He has to take the twenty-four hours and use them. It is the only way.

The killer strikes at night. Five deaths now: the first, an old Chinese man, apparently chosen at random. But the next followed a pattern: young women, the time between each murder each growing shorter and shorter. Which probably means he is running on borrowed time, trying to maintain a normal existence during the day, just like everybody else. Perhaps the killer senses his time is running out as his compulsion becomes ever more difficult to control. Or perhaps he thinks he is on a mission, that his crimes have a purpose, a reason. Perhaps he’s a believer, following some divine plan invented by his own twisted mind.

Or invented by something else. Highwire thinks again about the movement, the thing he can sense curling tight below the city.

Highwire has to move out of the night, use the daylight hours as well. The circus will have to wait – it is his home and it feels strange to be away from it for so long, but he needs to do this, one final push, catch the killer, and then… well, who knows what will happen when his own mission is over. Highwire doesn’t remember arriving in the city. If he was born of the circus for a purpose, and if that purpose is fulfilled…

Then that is how it will be.

He thinks about this as he watches the crowds in Union Square. He isn’t wearing the costume from the circus; he is dressed like those around him, like those shopping and walking, sitting, laughing, talking. Across from where he sits is the stop for an open-topped double-decker bus tour of San Francisco. The bus is red and yellow, and Highwire can hear the tour guide drumming up business, ushering people on board.

Adjusting to daylight work will not be difficult, but he has to be careful. He knows he mustn’t betray who he is, what he is capable of. He must hide not only from the public, from the police, but from
him
, the killer, because while the killer strikes at night, perhaps he’s around during the day too. And if he suspects he is being followed during the day by the same god of the air who stalks him in the hours of darkness, then he’ll go to ground, and Highwire’s power will be exhausted.

Mid-morning. The day is glorious, the sky a deep blue, the streets a dappled collection of bright light and deep shadow cast by the closely arrayed skyscrapers.

He’s out there, somewhere. The Hang Wire Killer. Maybe he’s having his morning coffee in Union Square. Maybe he’s on that tour bus. Maybe he’s
driving
that tour bus.

Highwire doesn’t know, but now he’s ready to find out. The hunt will continue, and this time it will be successful.

The killer has to be stopped.

He gets up off the bench, and stops, looks around. Nobody is watching, nobody is listening, nobody cares.

He walks across the square, crosses the street, and heads down the hill. After a moment, he comes to an empty storefront near a big intersection. The windows of the store are big and black, and make good mirrors.

Highwire regards his reflection. The clothes he is in fit and are ordinary. Nothing to draw attention. Without the costume he doesn’t recognize himself, but he doesn’t expect to. He doesn’t even know his own name. Only that at the circus, at night, he is called Highwire, the name that defines him.

Out here, he is nobody. Everybody. A man with no name, just an anonymous citizen. In the window reflection he sees brown eyes that match his jacket, and short hair just a shade lighter. The face is handsome enough, but plain. Clean shaven. Above the left eyebrow is an angled bruise, a dull red line, like he’s hit his head on something blunt and narrow. He fingers the bruise, and it hurts a little. He doesn’t remember the injury. He wonders if he should.

He drops his hand and looks around. If anyone has noticed him looking at his own reflection, they don’t show it. People move around him like water; in the reflection he sees the occasional glance, but nothing more.

He turns and continues down to the intersection, lost in the sea of people, in the perfect cover, in the perfect disguise.

The killer is out here somewhere, and all he has to do is find him.

Highwire stands on the street, opens his senses, and lets the city pour into him.

— INTERLUDE —

GIBBSTOWN, NEW JERSEY

Joel crashed through the undergrowth, and his feet twisted on a root. He pitched forward, pushing his arms in front of him and colliding with the hard ground with his elbows, his hat flying off his head. Something cracked; pain, white hot, shot up his arm. His instinct was to cry out, but he just managed to close his throat in time, stifling the sound and biting clean through his bottom lip in the process. More pain and the taste of pennies.

He rolled over on his back and then found he couldn’t stop. The bank was at a shallow angle but he had enough momentum to keep tumbling, rolling like a carpet unfurled, into the gully. The water that trickled a crooked line at its base was sharp and cold, like needles pricking his skin, head to toe. This time he did cry out; he couldn’t help it, but all he got was a mouthful of water and silt.

He turned and coughed, eyes blinking, his injured arm held across his chest, cradled by the other, the pearl-handled gun still tight in his hand. He fought to control his breathing, slowing it, ignoring the burn in his chest and the way his throat spasmed to clear itself. He’d made a racket already but he didn’t want to make any more sound. Maybe the fall had been fortuitous; maybe he’d lost the monster that was chasing him.

Maybe. It was late afternoon, a Thursday, if he remembered right. The Pine Barrens were dull and drab, the world painted in hardly any colors other than the cigarette ash sky and the deep green of the trees and the dun brown of the soil. He was alone, or so he had thought, the wind his only companion, the wind that moaned and whistled through the pines. It felt like he was the only man in the whole world, which in a way he was, here in the middle of the Barrens.

But he was not alone. The area was remote and quiet, the perfect place to hide a part of the fairground, to keep it safe from the curious and unwise. With no people around, not for miles and miles, it was also the perfect place for monsters to live.

Joel gasped, his nostrils flaring as he sucked in the cold air. Above, up the bank, just over the lip, something was walking. It sounded like hooves, but not enough for a horse or a deer. They padded on the dirt, then stopped, then padded again. Something on two legs, walking on hooves like the devil himself.

Joel smiled. There was only one devil here, in the middle of the pines, and it was not the monster that stalked him.

He released his arm, then stretched it, flexed it. The break was already healed, the sprains and bruises gone. The burning deep in his chest had evaporated, and when he took his next breath it was light and easy. He was well looked after, and he smiled.

Joel rose from the creek, his black suit damp and rumpled. In one hand he held the gun, and the other felt for his fob pocket where the coin sat, impatient and angry and cold.

He was close.

Two more hoof-beats above, and then the sniffing of a large animal, then something else, a sound like the canvas of a circus tent being unpacked and unfolded. Something dark appeared over the lip of the bank, a triangular shape extended and flexed and then disappeared again. A wing, bat-like, the size of a kitchen table.

Joel stiffened. The sound of the creature’s wings had reminded him of the circus. For a moment he had thought he could smell the Big Top, but now the moment was gone.

He pulled the hammer of the gun back, ready to move. He wasn’t sure he could take on the monster, but he had the light on his side. The light was a cruel and mysterious master, its commands vague riddles, but he knew that the light would not let him die, not its chosen servant. The power out of space burned in his veins, kept him whole.

He took a step forward, one foot on the incline of the bank, ready to vault up it and remove this latest obstacle. Of course, he thought, the monster was part of it too. The fairground was near, a large piece or maybe many smaller ones, it felt like. Out there, hidden somewhere in the trees. That there was a monster here too, one that stayed hidden from mankind most times but had been seen in the nearby places, in Gibbstown and St. Peter, was no coincidence. The power of the carnival leaked into the very earth where the pieces sat, delving down, searching for the groundwater and beyond, searching for the plutonic thing beneath, the thing that moved.