Pomegranates full and fine (41 page)

The spectators sat atop other tables, or leaned against the wall. The big man Tango said was a troll crouched in one corner like a huge, ugly statue. The handsome twins, Dex and Sin, stood against opposite walls, eyes alert, obviously watching Riley to be sure he didn’t cheat. Whiplike Marshall kept watch at the door, presumably to ensure that the duke’s prisoners didn’t try to escape. Tolly sprawled across a pool table, fidgeting nervously, his body deforming and distorting so rapidly it was uncomfortable to watch him. He had been playing with billiard balls, stretching his fingers wide and wedging balls between each of them — until one of the balls had dropped like thunder to the floor. Riley had missed a shot. The changeling had whirled around and given Tolly such a harsh snarl that the mad vampire had put all of the balls down instantly and silently, and had not touched them again. Riley managed to win the game.

Miranda herself sat next to Tango. The two women were quiet. Miranda couldn’t think of anything to say

and Tango____ Miranda glanced sideways at the

changeling. Tango had been avoiding even looking at her since the long duel had begun. Miranda looked down at her feet, cursing silently. She thought she had made a breakthrough when Tango had let herself be hypnotized, but there was still a distance between them.

An uncomfortable distance. Maybe Tango was ashamed of what she had almost done tonight. Miranda had seen her hands clenching in anger and understood instantly what it meant. She hoped that her intervention had helped, and not just angered Tango further. Right now the changeling was grim-faced as she watched the duel. At least Miranda hoped she was grim-faced because of the duel. It was impossible to guess what she thought about anything else.

Riley lost another game. And another. The pooka just kept grinning at Duke Michael, but Miranda grimaced. And then yawned.

She sat upright with a start. Tango’s head snapped around to look at her. “What?”

“The sun’s coming up,” Miranda murmured. She could feel the dull weariness of daytime creeping over her. She looked around for Tolly. He was already asleep, lying curled up underneath one of the pool tables.

“There are no windows here,” Tango pointed out. “You’ll be fine.”

Miranda shook her head. “That’s not what I’m worried about.” She had slept days in places that were at much greater risk of exposure to deadly sunlight than the deep Kithain court. “What happens if Riley loses?” “He and I will be punished. At worst exiled — which isn’t such a bad thing.”

“No. To me and Tolly.” Miranda shuddered. “Our sanctuary here only lasts until the end of the game.” Tango was silent for a moment. “If he loses,” she said finally.

Riley’s smile wavered for a moment as one of his shots slapped the bumpers on either side of a pocket; the ball rolled back out into the center of the table.

Miranda closed her eyes, listening as the duke played the table. His last shot missed. Riley won the game — narrowly. Six games to six.

She heard Tango shifting, settling down onto the floor. The changeling reached up and touched Miranda’s knee. “Miranda.” The vampire opened her eyes. Tango was sitting on the floor. She was holding out someone’s jacket, left behind in the changeling pool hall and now folded up into a pillow. She pushed it at Miranda. “Lie down.”

Miranda was too sleepy to protest. She took the folded jacket and stretched out on the pool table. The makeshift pillow smelled of tobacco smoke and, strangely, marigolds. Through half-closed eyes, she saw Duke Michael line up his shot. He missed. The sidhe’s hair was wild, his tank top untucked and damp with sweat. Even his false eye seemed dull with exhaustion, but he grinned. The only shot left open to Riley now was difficult. Very difficult. Miranda forced her eyes to stay open, to watch the shot her life depended on. If Riley lost, she and Tolly would be thrown out of the court and into the sun. Riley’s smile was strained as he bent down. In spite of her best efforts, Miranda’s eyes drifted away from the pooka and the sidhe, settling down on Tango. The nocker was watching the game intently, but she glanced up to meet Miranda’s gaze and give her an apprehensive grin. Miranda reached one hand over the edge of the table. Tango took it and squeezed it nervously as she looked back to the game.

Riley’s cue snapped forward.

Miranda’s eyes slid shut, the irresistible force of the rising sun tugging her eyelids down. She heard two soft impacts — like a mortally wounded man falling to his

knees. Then...

The wounded man collapsed and died with the sound of a single billiard ball falling into a pocket. Tango shouted something and pulled away from her. Miranda couldn’t understand what she was saying, but she sounded excited. The duke was choking out something as well, something formal and not very happy. Something about yielding.

Miranda slipped into safe, dreamless sleep.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“Laura, make much of me;

For your sake I braved the glen

And had to do with goblin merchant men.”

The sky lay over Toronto like a dirty quilt, stifling all movement. In some places, a hot sky is clear and sharp, the cruel blue of a flame. In Toronto, a hot sky is soiled, smudged dark with pollution on the horizons, hazy with pale humidity at its heavenly apex. A hot sky is almost white. The sun is a gateway into an unforgiving furnace. Trees wilt, cool green fading in the heat reflected from the buildings, the sidewalks and the streets. Even the shadows burn, their edges fraying and drifting apart in the heat.

The wind was dead. Breathing was a labor. The air hit Tango’s lungs with all of the weight of a lead pipe. July 17th, she had heard on the radio when she first emerged from the Kithain court into the white light of noon, was shaping up to be the hottest day of the year so far. It had already surpassed a fifty-two-year record for the day, and forecasters were expecting the temperature to rise even higher as the afternoon progressed. By three o’clock, it had set a new all-time record.

Toronto mourned the victims of last night’s penny murders. Parents returning from a night out had found their three children beaten to death in their own home. •The story screamed from every newspaper box and blared from every television and radio news report. It seethed in the mind of every person in the city. Protesters had begun gathering early: at police headquarters, at the division offices that housed the taskforce investigating the murders, at Queen’s Park, at Toronto city hall. The number of protesters, like the temperature, rose as the day progressed. People moved from demonstration to demonstration, shouting their outrage, seeking a target for their anger — and their fear.

The police hadn’t done enough. The police hadn’t acted quickly enough. The police were holding back evidence that could stop the murderers. The politicians had cut back the police budget too far for them to be effective. The politicians coddled criminals. Soft laws encouraged an increasfe in violent crime.

The eyes of the media only seemed to make things worse. Local stations carried regular newsflashes and special reports monitoring the situation. The coverage brought more people flooding into the downtown core, some to join the protests, many just to watch. Crowds of spectators gathered around the edges of the demonstrations just as crowds will gather to watch a building go up in flames. A lot of people tried to drive into the core; at four o’clock, two major routes were as clogged as they would have been on a weekday at rush hour. Downtown parking lots were full. Cars were just cruising the streets, horns honking as if this were a party. When people started passing out from the heat, there was no way to get them to a hospital. The streets

were jammed.

A middle-aged couple had driven through Yorkville several times in a car equipped with loudspeakers that blared a fundamentalist message of repentance and renunciation of sin, “for the millennium is near!”

The police were out in full force. Foot officers walked the streets. Mounted officers watched over every demonstration. Cruisers stood on every corner. There were barricades around police headquarters. None of the news reports had shown live pictures of police in riot gear yet, but stock video of police donning helmets, protective vests and shields flashed across television screens frequently. Monday’s riot on College Street and the Thursday morning protest outside of the taskforce offices received heavy airplay as well.

Just after five o’clock, Tango, Dex, Sin and Slocombe walked heavily down the stairs and into Duke Michael’s court. Riley looked up at them. The air in the pool hall was as hot and sticky as the air outside, in spite of the court’s underground location. The only sign here of the chaos building aboveground was a large-screen TV that was tuned to one television station’s constant news reports. Kithain watched it in between rounds of pool, just as humans might watch a baseball game while they played pool in a bar. Riley’s return to the court and the presence of two sleeping vampires were attracting much more attention. Most Kithain, however, were simply too caught up in anticipation of the coming Highsummer Night party to worry about anything else, big or small.

Riley had decided that it would be better if they kept the news of Solomon’s plot very quiet. It made things simpler. There was less to explain to the other Kithain

— and less exposure of the duke’s defeat in the duel. The duke was angry, of course, but the terms of the fior bound him to keep his bargain with Riley. That the pooka was trying to spare him any further embarrassment, he acknowledged only grudgingly.

Riley didn’t ask Tango and the others anything. Tango knew that their return — particularly their uninjured return — was answer enough for him. Still, she frowned sourly at her friend. “Solomon’s gone,” she said simply. “The house was empty.” She slapped her hand against the side of a pool table in frustration. “Damn.”

“You didn’t expect him to make it easy, did you, Tango?”

“No.” Tango sighed. “I suppose not.” Solomon’s house had been the first target of their efforts. If they were going to try to prevent the Bandog summoning rite, and the final sacrifices that would accompany it, they had a limited number of options. The first had, of course, been to surprise Solomon well before the rite began. A few Kithain had oracular abilities. Riley had enlisted the aid of one of them, but after repeated attempts, the Kithain had been unable to locate any sign of Solomon in the city. He had either left or was being hidden from magical detection just as DeWinter had hidden them last night. Tango had taken Dex, Sin, and Slocombe to the Nephandus’ home just to be sure that he wasn’t there. He hadn’t been. In fact, the house was absolutely vacant, as if Solomon had been able to eradicate all trace of himself over the last thirty-six hours. The huge, gutted emptiness of the Bandog worship hall on the second floor had been filled in, broken back down into separate rooms, probably through the power of Solomon’s magick. Even the eerie gray tree in the basement was gone. Dex had almost started to snicker in disbelief at her story, except that Sin caught his brother’s arm and pointed up into a shadowy comer of the basement. Hanging from a socket in the darkness was a shattered light. There was a second in another dark corner. The bulbs Miranda had shattered the night of her rescue. Dex’s mouth had become a quiet line.

“What’s next?” Tango asked Riley. “Union Station?” They might be able to deny Solomon the use of Toronto’s big, central railway terminus as the site for his summoning of Shaftiel.

Riley nodded. “If we can. I’m not even sure how Solomon intends to use it. There are people around the station all night. It’s a busy place.”

Sin caught the pooka’s arm and drew his attention to the big-screen television. “I think that’s your answer.” The television showed a big pile of burning rubbish along a railroad track. Firefighters were dousing the blaze. “This video just in,” said the news anchor. -“Vandals dumped garbage onto the GO train tracks outside Union Station, then set it on fire. This is the first act of deliberate vandalism we’ve seen today, a sign of increasing tension in the mobs downtown.” The scene switched back to the television studio, and the news anchor turned to a commentator. “Obviously we’re looking at trouble here, Dwight. What do you think police reaction is going to be?”

“Oliver, I think the smart move would be to prevent any more people from getting into the downtown core. Shut down the subways, redirect traffic — close Union Station and let trains idle outside the city until this

blows over, if necessary.”

“Isn’t that a little extreme?”

“I don’t think Toronto’s ever faced a potential powder keg like this before, Oliver....”

Riley scowled and turned away from the TV. “Solomon’s magick at work?”

“More likely Bandog following orders,” Tango reminded him. She had filled him in on the whole story of what had gone on while he was Solomon’s sleeping prisoner. All except her personal revelations to Miranda, of course. “Magick isn’t the only way to get things done. Could he have Bandog close down the station?”    .

“Tango...”

She clenched her teeth. Unlike her, Riley wasn’t saying anything about what was going on, about why or how he had become involved with the Bandog. It was frustrating. She pulled him aside, away from the other Kithain. “I need to know, Riley. Is Solomon capable of having Union Station shut down?” .

“Yes,” Riley admitted reluctantly. “That, and a lot more.”

Tango frowned. She had seen police, activists and the media represented at the Bandog ritual. Who else had been there whom she hadn’t recognized? “How deep does his influence go?”

“Right to the bottom. Toronto municipal government. Metro regional government. Queen’s Park. Business — there’s a baseball game tonight and it’s still going ahead. There’s a Bandog in power there, refusing to cancel the game.” Riley shook his head. “When people get out of that, the situation downtown is just going to get worse. Why do you think Solomon wanted

Miranda in the Bandog? Beyond sex.” Tango shrugged. “He wanted a foothold in the Sabbat. The Bandog are everywhere, Miranda.”

“Even in the Kithain court?” Tango guessed. Riley nodded.