Paradigms Lost (50 page)

“. . . smarter . . . than I thought . . . Mr. Wood,” it gasped, backing out of the bathroom clumsily. “Much smarter. I’ve been far too long without a decent opponent, and it shows, does it not?” It rubbed fiercely at its eyes. “Alas, my eyesight shall recover momentarily, and I am hardly harmless!”

Canned goods began floating into the air. I muttered a curse of my own; it was going to play Darth Vader, and I was no Luke Skywalker. I threw myself down on the floor, ignoring the increase in bruises, and slid towards the front of the store as a hurricane of metal cylinders started streaking randomly around the enclosed space, ricocheting off the still-standing shelves, walls, support columns, an occasional one bouncing off the floor or me. I restrained the grunts and groans of pain—I didn’t need to give it any help in targeting. Somehow I’d lost the CryWolf glasses. I was going to put in a hell of an expense account to Baker . . .

Lost my . . .

I somersaulted forward and moved into another aisle, hunkering down. My gaze roved frantically, searching.

“Ah . . . there . . . starting to come back . . .” I heard it mutter. The cans stopped moving, and I could picture it standing there, listening. I knew I couldn’t be noiseless, not in all this destruction. Despite my attempts, there were rustlings, cracklings, clanks of cans rolling. In the distance, I heard sirens, but they wouldn’t be here in time . . . assuming any wolf was brave enough to enter the Maelkodan’s range.

Clawed feet rattled through the supermarket stock, making a beeline for my aisle.

Where, dammit, where
—Ah-HA! I grabbed, then dove for the end of the aisle away from the creature—but my foot slipped on a can.

As I came down hard, jarring my chin so much that I bit my tongue and tasted blood, I thought to myself that at the least I’d managed to be convincing in that slippage. Next time, perhaps, I might consider learning how to do it without hurting myself. Behind me, the Maelkodan scuttled at lightning speed. Taloned hands grasped me, and rolled me over, the sculpted head bending to deliver an unavoidable stare . . .

It had time for a single horrified “NO!!”

In a blaze of rainbow-clouded energy, the creature neutralized its own matrix, leaving a bending statue. With difficulty, I wiggled free of its now stony grip, and slowly hobbled away. I lowered my right hand, which had been pressed tight against my temple, and extended it towards the shaking, wide-eyed clerk who had just risen from the wrecked counter.

“I’ll take these,” I said, placing the mirrored sunglasses in front of him. “And most of your stock of Band-Aids.”

CHAPTER 70

Souvenir

Baker stood staring at the statue. “I can’t believe it,” he repeated for the fourth time. “You beat the thing.”

“What you hired me for, isn’t it?” I said, rather gratified by the reaction; it was nice to know that the wolves were honest-to-God terrified of something and that it hadn’t just been a matter of trying to make the human do their dirty work. “One Mirrorkiller, packaged for transport.”

Baker finally got ahold of himself, and turned to face me. “So we’re square up, then?”

“You make sure Carruthers understands that I carried through on the spirit as well as the letter of our agreement,” I said. “No trouble from any of his people or yours, you won’t have trouble from me. And two other things—one I just want to reinforce, since I warned you before, and one new one.”

He looked at me suspiciously. “And those would be . . . ?”

“First, no more killings. I’ve got a good idea how many you had to do to take over here, and it’s sickening, but we’ve gone into that. You just make damn sure no more people—either natives or visitors—get killed by your people, or under their orders.”

Baker glowered at me. “We have to protect—”

“That isn’t my problem.” I cut him off with a cold glance. “You work your masquerade without killing, at least until you’re ready to take all of us on, or you
will
be taking all of us on. If you think someone’s getting too close to your secret, figure out a way to mislead them, or get ready to pull up stakes and move on. It’s your call, but if you push me into blowing the whistle, you can bet that not one out of ten of you will get out of Florida alive.”

Baker spat on the ground, looking like he yearned to do something else to me, but we both knew I was off-limits. “Fine, fine. I got your message. What’s the other thing?”

I pointed. “The statue. I want it carefully packed up and shipped to me.”

Baker looked startled. “Oookay, if ya say so. I cain’t say anyone in this here town’s likely to want it for a decoration. I’ll spring for that.” We shook hands on the bargain, my skin only slightly crawling. “So, you know y’all are welcome to stay here for free—I know you were on your honeymoon, an’ the beaches here are—”

I couldn’t restrain a laugh. “Baker, it’s a lovely town, but there’s no way in hell we’re staying here any longer. Right, Syl?” I said, as Sylvie finally crossed over the hastily erected yellow tape barrier and grabbed me in a hug that nearly cracked my sore ribs. “Ouch, watch it!”

“Sorry—I’m just sooo glad you’re alive, Jason. I thought you would be, but you can never be sure.” She glanced at Baker. “And he’s right. We’re out of here as soon as we can get packed.” She looked up at me. “So, Romeo, wherefore art thou taking thy wife for the rest of thy honeymoon?”

I winced at her mangled semi-Shakespeare, but smiled back. “Home to Morgantown, Syl. I think we’ve had enough adventure for now. Maybe we can go on another trip later.”

She snuggled into me. “Sounds perfect to me.”

CHAPTER 71

Saved For Later

“Oh, I had a king-sized attack of the shakes after it was all over,” I admitted, leaning back in the comfortable, oversized recliner near Verne’s fireplace and hugging Syl to me. “More than one. Cursing myself for giving it any chance at all, and so on.”

“No, no, Jason. All in all, I think you did precisely the right thing,” Verne said. “Perhaps it is merely that I am a relic myself, but I feel that there is such a thing as respecting one’s opponent, and part of that respect is, in fact, giving him or her . . . or it . . . the chance to not be your enemy. It is evident that the Maelkodan shared that respect for you. It could have attempted to kill you much earlier, and even later in the combat, there were tactics it might have used to kill you more efficiently. But just as you hadn’t arranged for a multiple crossfire or something of similarly lethal nature, it did not attempt to use—how would you put it?—ah,
cheesy tricks
to finish the chase.”

I chuckled, then sobered. “On that note, what do you think of Carruthers’ offer? Is he going to play fair on the deal, since I delivered the goods?”

“I would say without any shadow of a doubt, my friend—and I thank both your good fortune and good business sense for that bargain. Yes, he will abide by those terms; while some of the young wolves may sneer at such commitments, a true Elder knows better than to contemplate breaking a bargain sworn to in the King’s name. And if Carruthers’ name is truly Virigan . . . well, then he is more than merely Elder; he is one of the only surviving Firstborn.” He frowned, swirling his usual drink in its crystal glass. “I must admit, Jason, that I am as mystified—and concerned—with his outré interest in human genetic engineering as you. Such a thing would not, as far as I can tell, enhance the spiritual power or aspect of humanity—which is what they consume, as you know. Thus it cannot, at least directly, be concerned with improving their food supply. Indeed, tampering that interferes too much with certain aspects of humanity could actually damage humanity’s usefulness to them, so Virigan must be interested in . . . something else.”

I shrugged. “No hurry, I think. We’ll keep looking—or rather, Jeri’s outfit will, right?”

Jeri, still looking somewhat uptight at being in a meeting that so casually discussed burn-before-reading secret material, nodded. “You can bet on it. Since we’re not excluded from their hit list, unlike the rest of you, we also have no reason to hold back. I might note that when I gave my interim report on this incident, my boss did something I’ve never seen him do in all the years I’ve known him: give vent to an utterly spontaneous curse.”

“Why?”

“It seems,” Jeri answered, “that Mr. Carruthers was, in a way, sending us a message by appearing to you in that guise. Obviously, as a wolf, he could have chosen any shape he wanted. As far as we knew, Alexi Carruthers was killed off a number of years ago in a manner that remains classified. By showing us what he really is, he is telling Pantheon, and through Pantheon all of ISIS, that we’re dealing with something much nastier than we’d suspected . . . and be assured, we already suspected some seriously nasty things.”

“Well, Miss Winthrope,” Morgan said courteously, “I am sure I speak for us all when I say that you can count on our assistance if we could ever be of service.”

I glanced at Syl with a raised eyebrow. She gave a secretive smile. Morgan did seem to like Jeri, which was strange; I would never have thought she was his type. Whether Jeri had any interests outside of her job was something none of us would ever know unless she decided to tell us. “I have to give Ms. Gennaro a callback; it’s been several days already. I’m just trying to decide what to tell her.”

Kafan growled something, then sighed. “Twisty problem. Can’t just tell her to stop poking around in those things—it’s her job.”

“Besides that, trying to shove her out might cause talk by itself, and certainly wouldn’t keep someone else from going to the sites,” I pointed out.

Verne nodded. “I am afraid, Jason, that you will simply have to use your own judgement. You and I are safe—at least until that day when the King decides to try us again—but if she or her people learn too much, there will be more disappearances, regardless of whether they discover another monster or not. I would, in fact, judge it unlikely they will find anything of that magnitude again, but the discovery of even a few more artifacts whose age they can accurately measure would be greatly troubling to certain people. The demons cannot rework the face of a planet, not with the changes wrought on Earth since those long-ago days, but the few of their agents who remain are more than strong enough to obliterate prying scientists.”

“If it will help, I can always throw an international security umbrella over the work,” Jeri offered.

“No!” Kafan snapped, jumping to his feet.

Jeri looked uncertainly at him, aware of his capabilities. “Why the panic?”

“Control yourself, Raiakafan,” Verne said.

He closed his eyes, opened them again. “Because any such move would make it look like the governments are directly interested. The very last thing any of them want is for humanity, or its governments, to take a deep look into these things. That’s why you and your agency numbers are all going to be dead sometime soon.” He said the last line the same way I might have said “I’ll be ordering pizza for dinner tomorrow”—a casual statement of fact, impersonal but inarguable. “Your people ride the edge, and Carruthers’ signal just means that he’s marked you as needing his attention, or that of some of the other surviving forces. If you start doing things officially, they might decide that the whole world’s getting too close to the truth, and then they’d have to start a war or something.”

“A nuclear war would definitely be interfering with my life,” I pointed out, half-joking. I really didn’t like considering this entire shadow war thing right now.

To my surprise, Kafan and Verne seemed to take the idea seriously. “Jesting aside, you may have something of a point,” Verne said. “Carruthers’ own projects would be unlikely to survive an extreme sanction against the world order, and so he would have a vested interest in promoting maximum tolerance. Still, I agree with Kafan that unless there is no other choice, overt involvement of any intelligence agencies in such matters would be playing with fire.”

“Hey, just offering,” said Jeri. “And unless these demon thingies
do
still have the power to reshape the world, don’t be counting us out, Mr. Raiakafan Tai Lee Ularion Xiang. If someone does come gunning for us, you can bet they’ll know they’ve been in a fight.”

Kafan nodded to her, a mark of respect if not agreement.

I got up, leaving Syl on the recliner, and picked up the phone. I needed to contact Ms. Gennaro at the University. She was readily available, preparing a paper on some of the finds.

“Mr. Wood!”

“Yes. Nice to speak to you again, Ms. Gennaro. Your information was invaluable.”

“Please call me Mandy. So what exactly happened?” Her voice seemed slightly tense, as if she was trying to be relaxed but not quite succeeding.

“You can call me Jason, then. There was a series of murders in Florida . . .” I gave an expurgated version of events, leaving out things like werewolves, my bargain, and so on. “. . . And so, I was finally able to kill it off. Some of this you might see on the news soon, even though there was a heavy lid clamped on it at first.”

She was silent for a few moments. “So . . . you’re saying that this ‘Maelkodan’ was inside that casket we brought aboard?”

“Yes,” I answered. “And you were right, of course; Dr. O’Connell never left your ship. The Maelkodan killed him when it emerged. It, like the wolves, gains knowledge of its victims, so it was able to figure out a way to—at least temporarily—leave a false trail.”

“How horrid.” I could almost hear a shiver in her voice. “If it weren’t for the events in Morgantown, I’d think this was insanity. But . . . when we opened the casket, there were some odd traces that we didn’t know what to make of. Any dating we do on the casket at this point will be questionable, since it was not in controlled conditions when it was opened. We have a few other items from the same dig, however, so we are hopeful that we may be able to date them.”

I took a deep breath. “Mandy, I also have to give you a warning.”

“A . . . warning, Mr. . . . Jason?”

“I can’t—nor would I—try to tell you not to continue your line of research. However, I do have to caution you; you’ve heard the old expression ‘Things Man Was Not Meant To Know,’ of course?”