Moonheart (51 page)

Weird guy, Tucker thought. He slips easily from talking like some cultural aide to street talk. Well, he might not want to get into his reasons for breaking into Tamson House, but Tucker wasn't going to just set it aside. The guy was a pro, he
and
the two goons that were left. They weren't here for some simple B&E. They knew about Hengwr and were here to grab him. What Tucker wanted to know was who gave Gannon his orders. And why.

"That might be an excellent place to start," Traupman said, forestalling Tucker's imminent outburst.

"Wait a minute," Blue said. "The Inspector's on the straight and narrow this time. We've got a right to know what these guys are after."

"In good time," Jamie said. He understood Traupman's concern. They were trapped here— all of them together. They needed to stick together if they were going to survive. He wanted to now what Gannon was doing here as much as anyone, but they couldn't risk internal strife right now. Not with the creatures on their doorstep and the House God knew where.

"How are we set for up food and water?" he asked. "And power?"

Blue sighed. Jamie was becoming a right little arbitrator these days, which was a funny position for him to be in seeing how they were all usually trying to calm
him
down. Losing Sara had hit him hard. Blue took a deep breath to steady the rush of adrenaline and nodded. It was Jamie's House. He'd play by Jamie's rules for now. But God help Gannon if he tried to set them up when they were all supposed to be working together.

"We've got enough fuel," he said, "to run the generator for a month— that's saying we use every light and appliance in the place the whole time. If we conserve it, we should be able to go for some time. We could close off a lot of the place, once the weather turns bad— that'd help on heating and save fuel. How's the wood pile doing, Fred?"

"We have about ten cords," Fred replied. "But water could be a problem. We switched to city hydro back in the fifties. The wells are still operational, but being where we are— I can't promise we'll get anything out of them."

"But there's water right now?" Tucker asked.

Blue left the table and tried the tap. There was a spluttering in the pipes, then the tap spit out a discolored water that cleared quickly. He took a cautious sip.

"Country water," he pronounced. "No chlorine."

"What about food?" Gannon asked.

"Enough to feed an army," Fred replied. "We stored a lot of produce in the cellars this autumn and all the kitchens have canned goods. We might run out of some things... but we'll have the basic staples for a long time."

"Well then," Traupman said. "We've established that we won't freeze, starve, nor die of thirst. Perhaps it's time we pooled our information."

He glanced at Tucker as though to say, it's your show. Just take it easy.

"What about weapons?" Gannon asked.

Tucker shook his head. "We can get to that. Let's not mess around anymore, Gannon. We're all stuck here for the duration. Either we work together, or you and your men can get out of the House and try to set up a working arrangement with our friendly monsters. That's the nitty— gritty— just to let you know where you stand. Got it?"

Gannon nodded slowly.

"So give," Tucker said.

The Inspector, Gannon decided, was as abrasive as he'd been made out to be. A throwback to the era of the tough street-wise cop. And, from all the reports that had crossed Walters's desk, a man who got things done. He didn't make idle threats.

Gannon had already decided to go along with Tucker as far as he could, for all that it went against his grain. He just didn't know how much to give. Walters wasn't going to be too happy about having his name given up to the horsemen. On the other hand, Walters wasn't stuck in this weird place. Gannon knew that if he didn't cooperate with Tucker, he might never return to his own world for Walters to chew him out in the first place.

"What do you want to know?" he asked.

"What were you and your men doing in Tamson House?"

"You guessed that much, Inspector. To acquire Thomas Hengwr— if he proved to be on the premises." There was no point, Gannon thought, in mentioning that they were also planning to pick up Jamie Tams and eliminate the Inspector himself.

"Okay," Tucker said. "Then the big question is: Why?"

"My employer wished to have a private conversation with Hengwr."

"And his name is?"

Gannon hesitated, then sighed. "Walters," he said.

"Walters? J. Hugh Walters?"

"The same."

"Jesus H. Christ! Don't tell me. It was him that set Hogue up to run the PRB, wasn't it?"

"For all intents and purposes, it was Mr. Walters who set up the PRB itself."

"But why? Why go through all that trouble? I mean, it was just to get hold of Hengwr, wasn't it? Christ, with his resources, why did he need the Force to do his research for him?"

"Your people were already moving into the area of paranormal research," Gannon explained. "Mr. Walters is a thrifty man. Why should he duplicate research that was already underway? He merely put his own man in charge to ensure that the PRB concentrated on what was valid— rather than the charlatans and frauds that pervade such research."

"And how did he know that Hengwr was the real stuff?"

"Mr. Walters knew Thomas Hengwr in his youth. Hengwr was an old man then. Years later, Walters met Hengwr again, and while he had gone from youth to middle age, Hengwr didn't appear to have aged a single year. Subsequent investigation proved that while a man answering Hengwr's description appeared sporadically over the last few hundred years, he did not exist on paper. There were no records on him— birth certificates, passports, that sort of thing. From what data we could acquire, we discovered that Thomas Hengwr apparently possessed the secret of eternal life.

"Mr. Walters is very concerned with aging. He's in his fifties now. He wants Hengwr's secret of longevity. The rest of Hengwr's supposed paranormal abilities would be only so much topping on the cake."

Tucker shook his head in amazement. Given this information a week earlier, he would have laughed it off. But given what he knew now, that these abilities were real— all
too
real— he went cold at the thought of someone like Walters acquiring them. The man was a voice that was heard in more than one of the world's major nations. He moved high in political, industrial and academic circles. Every day you read something about him— about his acquisition of this, his support of that.

The one thing about Walters that stood out in Tucker's mind was his ruthlessness, an utter disregard for anyone but himself, for anything but what served him. It wasn't something that the average man in the street would be aware of, but to someone like Tucker who knew how to look and what to look for, it was all too plain to see. Give a man like that immortality... paranormal powers... what could ever stand in his way? Those that he might conceivably not be able to defeat, he need only outlive.

At least Hengwr had kept a low profile. From the skimpy file he had on him, Tucker couldn't really see the old man as a threat. It had always been the possibility of the extraordinary abilities that he might possess that had worried Tucker. Not as they were used by Hengwr, but as they might be used by another. Someone like Walters.

"So," Traupman said, ticking the items off on his fingers. "We've established why Mr. Gannon and his associates came to be in the House. We have provisions. We have the shelter and protection of the House."

"We can't be sure of that last item," Blue said. "We still don't know what it is about the House that keeps those creatures out. It could cut out at any time."

Traupman nodded. "Granted. But that is only a part of our primary concern. Topmost in our priorities should be discovering a way to return to our own world."

"And if we can't?" Gannon asked.

Nobody wanted to think about that.

Well, we've got Thomas Hengwr, Blue thought. All we've got to do is bring him around. Because if they didn't...

"We're going to have to do a little reconnaissance of the area," he said, thinking aloud.

Gannon nodded. "Maybe pick up a local and get some directions— though if those things out there are all we've got to work with..."

"It's out of the question," Jamie said. "We can't possibly send someone out there to scout around. He wouldn't last five minutes once those creatures caught wind of him."

"There's one bright side we haven't looked on," Tucker said. "At least we don't need silver bullets to kill them. We can hurt them— for as long as our ammunition holds out."

"And then?" Jamie asked. "What happens when we run out of bullets before the enemy runs out of wolfmen?"

"Thomas Hengwr," Traupman said slowly, echoing Blue's earlier thought. "He's what it all boils down to. We've got to bring him around."

Gannon shook his head. From the quick look he'd had at Hengwr after the battle in the front hall with the tragg'a, he wouldn't put much hope in the old man. He remembered being shocked at the frail figure Hengwr was, lying there under the bedclothes, the skin drawn tight across his face, almost translucent, the scars puckering one half of it. He found it hard to picture Hengwr as the immortal sorcerer that Walters had made him out to be. He didn't look strong enough to support his own weight.

"He's all we've got?" he asked Traupman.

"Not unless you have a better suggestion."

"Nothing that comes to mind. This isn't exactly my field of expertise— if you take my meaning. But isn't there something you can do to snap him out of it? What exactly is the matter with him, anyway?"

"As I told Jamie earlier," Traupman explained, "he appears to be suffering the effects of some severe trauma— the cause of which we can only guess at. Given the creatures that attacked us earlier, I can only shudder to think of what he has had to face."

"So we wait?" Gannon asked. He looked around the table. No one seemed pleased with the idea, but like him they didn't have any advice to offer either.

"Well," he said. "Let's work on our defense. I don't want to be caught sleeping if those creatures manage to break in again."

Blue nodded. "I figure if we patrol the ground floors, that should be enough."

"But no one outside," Jamie insisted.

"No one outside," Blue agreed.

Though sooner or later, someone was going to have to go out there and scout around. Blue didn't have enough patience to sit around and wait for their enemy to make the next move. Come the morning, he'd give serious thought to having a look at what lay beyond the fields around the House.

"I'll take the first shift," Tucker said, glancing at his watch. "It's going on nine. Say three-hour shifts?"

"This is a big place," Blue said. "We better have at least two guards— one to patrol the east and south wings, the other for the north and west."

"Sounds good," Gannon said. "I'll share the first watch with the Inspector."

"Then I'll take the second," Blue said, "with..." He looked around the table, settling on Gannon's companion.

"Mercier," Gannon said. "Chevier and Fred here can have the three-to-six shift, then the Inspector and I'll take over."

"What about us?" Jamie asked.

Tucker shook his head. "We'll need you and Dick alert enough to deal with Hengwr."

"And me?" Sam asked.

"You can share the dawn shift with Chevier and Fred," Blue said.

For a long moment after that they sat and looked at each other. The full implications of what had actually happened to them still had to sink in. Intellectually, they prepared for the coming confrontation with Hengwr's enemy who had now become their own enemy. It was easier to put aside the shock of the unreal being real when they were all in a group like this. It would be later, when they split up, when some tried to sleep and others patrolled the House's lonely corridors, that they would each have to cope as best they could.

They were trapped in a situation where logic had no perimeters, where all their experiences meant nothing. They didn't know the rules. If there were any rules.

"Well?" Chevier asked when Gannon and Mercier met him back in the front hall.

"Better get some sleep," Gannon said. "You've pulled the dawn shift."

"Yeah. Sure." He took out a mint and popped it into his mouth. "But how're we handling this, Phil?"

"We play along with them. What else can we do? We're in a no-give situation."

"And Walters?"

Gannon shrugged. "We'll worry about him when and if we get back to the real world. But then... well, we'll grab Hengwr and make our break."

"Tucker's mine," Mercier said.

"Yeah? Where'd you get a hard-on for him?"

"Well, we can start with him wasting Serge."

Gannon nodded. He was remembering his own confrontation with Blue in the hallway moments before Serge got hit. It irked him to have been taken so easily by an amateur.

"Okay," he said. "The Inspector's all yours. But the biker's mine." He grinned. "What about you, Mike? You got a preference?"

Chevier shook his head. "Sounds to me like you don't want to leave any witnesses," he said in his whispery voice. "If that's the case, there'll be plenty for all of us. I'll just take whatever's left."

"I don't think we should wait," Mercier said. "It's when we get back to Ottawa that they'll be expecting us to make our move."

"He's got a point there," Chevier said.

"We wait," Gannon said decisively. "I've got the feeling that we'll need every hand that can hold a gun before we get out of this place."

"I wish you hadn't come," Tucker said to Maggie. She was accompanying him on his rounds along the south side of the House.

"There are times when you infuriate me with your protecting-the-helpless-female attitude. You know that, Tucker?"

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," she replied, mimicking him. Then she sighed. "But this isn't one of them. I just couldn't stand the thought of phoning you just to have you ask me to wait for you at home."

"I know. In your shoes, I'd've done the same."