Out of the Black (15 page)

"Well Anne, she's all yours!" Wyler said brightly.

"Oily bugs through the doorway!" The Harm shrieked from behind him.

"Thanks," Anne said. "Nice needle work, Doc."

The doctor put a hand on his chest and gave a quarter bow. "From you... high praise. And how's my favorite vampire?"

"Can't complain," she lied.

"You get a haircut?"

She shook her head as she inserted a flexible needle into the barrel. The doctor shrugged and glanced back to the Harm, who was now making more peaceful incoherent sounds. "I'm gonna need a CBC and a Harm screen. Surprised?"

Anne grimaced. "Nope."

"Enjoy!" He gave her a playful smack on the shoulder as he went past.

Anne took a deep breath and stepped toward the Harm, who was now wiggling her head and gurgling. This was the worst part of her job. Sure it was dangerous, these guys were nutty strong and violent, but the worst part was the anticipation. You never knew what was going to happen. So far Anne had gotten away with two ripped jackets, lots of spit, and one blood splattering from a biker who had bitten the tip of his own tongue off. She was lucky. There was an RN in Vegas that had a finger bitten off just last week.

About five meters away, another Harm was screaming bloody murder as Wyler vied for position with his needle.

***

"I really want to chop something with this!" Rae's excited voice came from behind Ping, where she was swinging the sword around quickly but somewhat inexpertly.

They both turned to her, amused. "Ain't she great?" Ahmed whispered.

"I have no official comment, Mr. Ahmed."

"Alex, please."

Ping smiled and nodded.

"Ivo called it 'Neural Clarity', but I think 'Amp' is more descriptive."

"So, you put two kinds of whammy into the cameo. She puts it on and the rest of the free world sees your woman in a new light and she gets quicker too?"

"Quicker, more agile, more coordinated- sharper. It's a Cast that refines and clarifies the interface between her mind and the rest of her motor nervous system. Forging it into the silver was... challenging."

"So, if I put on her necklace, I get cuter and deadlier?"

"Nope. It's tailored for her. You put it on and you start to look weird from the perception Cast... I mean vomiting weird. Then you get dizzy from the ill-fitting Amp... vomiting dizzy."

Ping shook his head. "So you Spellified the keys? But how, they were across the room..."

"Nah, I Cast
you
. You've gotta understand, there are Casts and Forges. I Cast you, but I Forged the cameo. A Cast is like a spell. A Forge embeds a Cast into the fabric or nature of an object."

"Ah!" Ping said, laying on his best Irish accent. "So ya spend all day a'castin' fer rainbows, but ya Forge yer little lucky charms do ya?"

Rae snickered. "You do a mean Irish."

"You haven't seen my mean Irish yet."

Alex's tablet chirped for the second time in the past two minutes. "What's that? You getting messaged from other nerds in the wizards-only chat room?"

Alex was looking at his tablet. His stylus was spinning around his fingers again. "Nope... I've got a camera cluster mounted above the study area outside. Got it alarmed to notify me when any of the doors open. In the past couple of minutes we've had two visitors."

"Innocent looking, book loving visitors, right babe?" Rae stopped swinging the sword.

"Well, now that you mention it, they're both thirtyish, in top physical shape, and though they came in separately, they seem to shop the same Ninja Gap for clothes." Alex shook his head. "They're searching the aisles, but neither is looking at the shelves. I think we might be in trouble."

The tablet chirped again. There was a moment of silence.

"Well?" Ping said at last.

"Another one." Alex said, closing his eyes and angling his head away with a theatrical wince, "Same approximate description, but meaner looking and slightly more female."

"Well, at least we're trapped." Ping said, looking about the room.

"Yes dear, we'll always have trapped." Rae put her hand on Alex's shoulder and gave it an encouraging squeeze, followed by a slightly less charitable shake. "Good job picking a secret rendezvous with no back door, honey!" She gave him a warm smile and a solid punch in the shoulder.

"Ow!" Alex rubbed his shoulder, but he smiled at her as if he'd only felt the encouraging squeeze thhere's not much to do now but wait and hope they aren't absolutely certain we're on this floor."

"Hope they just go away? This is our best plan... swell." Rae said, handing the sword to Ping and reaching under her jacket to check her concealed pistol.

Ping retracted the blade and shrugged his shoulders. "Hey, it might be nothing. Here, let me have a look." He moved around behind Alex and peered at the camera feed on his tablet. "Uh oh."

"What?" Rae and Alex said in unison.

"These people obviously got low scores at ominous suppression school. If you try hard, you can almost hear the suspense music."

Rae had moved into position over Alex's other shoulder. They both nodded.

The tablet chirped again as the elevator door opened. A man who looked like an aging surfer-turned-banker stepped in.

"Oh boy," Ping said without enthusiasm, "it's Good Cop."

"You know him?" Alex asked.

Ping nodded. "Yeah... his name's Garvey. He and his partner gave me the reaming about your keys."

"Uh oh." Rae said, shaking her head and looking at Alex. "This guy and his fraternal clone tossed your cube downstairs while I was waiting for the Detective here. He was packing."

"Yeah, he should be, he's FBI." Ping said.

"No...
packing
." Her eyes shifted to Alex, full of meaning.

Alex turned his head to Ping. "She means he posts to the wizards-only chat room."

"You mean someone put the hex on him like you did to me?" Ping asked.

Rae shook her head. "No. I saw him use it when they were searching the Alex's cubicle... probably Cast Vision to see if Alex left anything hot behind. He's in the club."

"Hot?"

"Forged... like Rae's necklace." Alex answered.

"So maybe the Feds have a special Lovecraft squad or something. These guys interrogated me when I was still fiddling with your keys." Ping paused to punch Alex in the shoulder, "They know something's up with Lutine and folks like him."

"Ow." Alex said, rubbing his shoulder again, "Yeah, the Gov's got Savants... like your grade school had federal agents. Governments come and go, but the Clans go back forever."

"Clans?"

Alex held up his hands, then after a slight pause, continued. "This is big trouble... There's a lot of stuff I don't know yet, but you've got to believe me here: we don't want to stay and chat. If these are the guys that interrogated you, then I think they're on the side of the people who killed Roy and Ivo."

"Now that's a cheery thought!" Rae hissed, fingering her cameo. "These guys managed to take down either of them alone and asleep, I'd be scared, but both..." She trailed off, shaking her head.

"So you're saying that Lutine and Sieberg were like Yoda and his more powerful twin?"

"They were more like Yoda and his love child. They acted like father and son. Course they weren't," Rae said, "didn't look a thing alike."

Alex shook his head. "Lutine was more like Gandalf than Yoda, but Roy... he was scary. Don't get me wrong, he looked like he wouldn't hurt a fly and whoa, if you ever saw him with a baby in the room you'd think he was a more intense version of a favorite grandma. But your image of him changes the first time you catch him playing."

Ping looked troubled. "Playing? You saying 'torturing animals' or something?"

Alex gave a nervous laugh. "No. When it came to animals he was more the compulsive petter... Rae, you remember the time Roy had the puppy at Ivo's office?"

She laughed. "Who could forget... he had that little rat on his head for a while."

"Anyway, that's not what I was talking about. Once I came early for practice on the roof of the Grant building. Roy was showing off for Ivo... it was the weirdest thing. Ivo was laughing, Roy was capering around doing some pretty amazing gymnastics- flips and stuff. They hadn't seen me yet, so I stood in the doorway and watched. The tricks got more intense- but with a sense of humor. One I remember was a multiple flip that ended in a landing on his head and shoulders with his arms out to the sides. He just stopped with his legs going straight up, kinda twitching- I almost yelled, I thought he was dead. But Ivo just laughs harder, and in a second, Roy's up again and smiling."

"Then some birds go overhead and boom! Roy's gone and a second later he comes back down with a pigeon nicely folded in one hand. I checked the place he landed later and there were cracks in the ceramic of the roof."

"You're saying he flies." Ping said, unimpressed. "Like Superman."

"I'm saying he jumped at least four meters up with enough precision to catch a bird in mid-flight without harming it. I'm saying he landed like an Olympic gymnast... not just nailed the landing, but did it with a flourish... then he gets all melodramatic and says something about crying in the rain, waving the bird around for emphasis. Ivo was amused, but it creeped me out."

"All these moments will be lost in time. Like tears in rain." Ping quoted, a connection forming in his head.

It was nice to see someone else shocked for a change. "How...?" Alex asked.

"It's from
Blade Runner
."

They both stared at Ping, confused.

"The video... really old movie. I found a well-watched copy of it when I decrypted Sieberg... Roy's tablet. Now I think I get his nickname too. The guy who said that line in the movie was named Roy..."

"Huh?" Rae said.

"I don't have time to explain
everything
to you people."

"Yeah," Alex said, lost in thought, "He'd been badgering me since forever to watch it with him... I'd always intended to, but..."

Another chirp came from Alex's tablet. They looked down in unison. The stairwell door had opened again and another man and woman in dark clothes entered. They were holding hands.

Ping, Rae and Alex suppressed laughter with varying degrees of success.

The hand-holders were both looking around the room in an awful approximation of casual. Their hands were clutched, but both were clearly uncomfortable with it. They never looked at each other, and when they moved they were both so decisiey were yanking one another about. It was comically bad cover.

"Lets just hope they're this bad at searching." Ping whispered.

They all had a grand, if quiet, laugh. They were all going to die.

On the screen, one of the casually dressed agents approached Good Cop. Alex turned up the volume on his tablet so they could hear.

"Sweep's complete. No sign of them. You sure they came to eight?"

"Quite." Good Cop said, giving a theatrical sigh, "We're going to have to get a little less subtle then... bring them in."

***

Anne pulled over a stool and sat at the Harm's left elbow. The listless Harm's head lolled away from Anne, drooling fiercely, no doubt. Anne breathed a sigh of relief. Sometimes the sedatives didn't work at all. Maybe she'd be extremely lucky and the Harm would wake up when Anne was long gone. The needle went in without a flinch. Anne popped the vac tube into the barrel and watched it fill. When it was full, she popped it out and attached the second one. Almost there.

Whispered as if in her ear, she heard dry laughter, "Look for us, find you won't."

Anne jumped. She looked around, searching for the speaker. The ward was full of other patients, but none were close enough, or creepy enough, to be the whisperer. She leaned across the Harm's slack body and looked down at her drooling face... nope.

Great, now she was hearing things too. Nearby, the screaming continued... the current subject was elves, for which the other Harm obviously had some ill feelings. The clamor intensified as the other Harm worked one hand out of his restraints. There were now two EMTs and two orderlies trying to get him subdued enough for Wyler's needle.

"So anxious!" The dry voice croaked from nowhere, full of menace. "Does it so long for our embrace? Can its fragile heart feel the coming?"

"Who's there?" Anne whispered, looking around, not wanting to attract attention.

"As if it hears, what does it feel?" Amusement crackled like dead leaves through the words, but the most disturbing part was the guttural sound that followed... like a deep growl, but with a touch of machinery. It was not the kind of sound any mouth could make.

Anne's every hair rose away from her skin, straining outward with fear. Ok, now she was really wishing she hadn't said anything... well, it's never too late to start. She set her unseeing eyes on her work.

The vial was full of inky blood. She removed the needle from the Harm's lifeless arm and began to fumble the full vac tube out of the barrel. 'Time to go, time to go, time to go' spun through her fear-fogged mind- a mantra, a syntactic snake eating its own tail. It was one thing to try to stop worshiping the God of Fear, but quite another to ignore him when he puts in a personal appearance.

Anne stopped with the vial of blood between her fingers, staring at it intently. It felt like she was holding a bag of bugs... though she could still feel the smooth texture of the vial's glass between her fingers, there was another feeling too... like small, ephemeral ants were crawling over the vial... spreading out over her fingers and hand. She stifled her scream and fought the urge to throw the vial across the room.

But then she saw it. Shimmering from inside the vial, like static on a damaged television, blue white chaotic energy seemed to pulse and vibrate from the blood. Even through the vial's glass, it was burning her hand. Anne realized that she could see the vial the same as always... no static, no bugs, but it was as if she had another sense, or an overactive imagination, that seemed to embellish the vial with the added lightshow. "What?" she whispered absently.

"It does! Smells its fear! It...
Hears
!" The last word dropped about five octaves, seeming to rumble through the ground. She looked around again... didn't anyone else hear this? It didn't look like it.