Staying Dead (22 page)

He blinked, tried to organize his thoughts, tried to recall his last memory before waking here.

Nothing. Only the cold waiting space of eternity, a hollow pain that ate everything else. Think, damn it! Dust. Cement. You were on a site, looking over a project. Karl had been behind you, holding your briefcase while you checked on the marble slabs to be set into the foundation. Something had been wrong with them, one had been damaged…. And then the memory rose as though out from deep lake water, to reclaim the air—save no air filled his lungs or formed his exhale. No breath…

And it came back to him, a sudden screaming howling rush that overran his brain, knocked down walls and took up residence like a flight of harpies. Logic fled. Dark blue eyes unfocused, then sharpened again in madness. Where he was no longer mattered. What he had been no longer mattered. Memories consumed him, and pain, and the only thing which concerned him was getting back to where he had been. And killing the man who had killed him.

His battered, staved-in face was further torn by a feral snarl that had the hounds stepping back carefully, so as not to catch his attention. He strode forward, his feet planted firmly on the earth in the ground-covering stride of a man with a destination. But the well-manicured blades of grass poked through the dusty brown leather of his shoes, through the pale skin and bone. Not like physical objects might pass through a hologram, but as though two solid objects somehow shared space with each other, two universes meshing imperfectly.

Left behind, one of the hounds whined, a low, worried, confused sound. Then, as one, the pack turned and fled in the opposite direction.

The ghost walked faster, ignoring the trees around him, the wildlife that fled from him, his death-crazed brain throwing image on top of image, memories colliding with nightmares. The feel of paper beneath his fingers, of fine wood and cool glass, rough-hewed stone and polished marble. The sharpness of a knife at his throat, the putridity of smoke and burning flesh. The touch of skin to skin, the sound of laughter low in the throat and whispers and shouts of joy. The sensation of falling, of landing. The satisfaction of completion interrupted by pain. Laughter, low-voiced laughter as he lay in his own blood, as they poured darkness on top of him, heavy darkness, and left him screaming until he smothered beneath his own voice…

Not heaven, not hell, not even the endless turning of some judgmental wheel—forever held suspended within his tomb, the energy of his death sustaining the spell until the structure it was tied to—His structure! His creation!—crumbled and fell.

But he was out, now. Free of that damned crypt, if not of this world. But that was all right. That was better than all right.

He stopped, something inside him orienting itself, and then he nodded sharply, and changed direction, this time heading south. He knew what had happened. He knew where to go.

T
hey were waiting in his apartment when he came home from the gallery that night. Two of them, high-rent suits and subdued silk ties, shoes polished and haircuts perfect. A chorus of Warren Zevon's “Werewolves of London” went through Sergei's brain before he ruthlessly clamped down on it. Now was no time for whimsy.

Their timing was, to put it bluntly, horrible. And it didn't help to acknowledge that he had brought it down on himself; going to Douglas had started a chain of inevitability, this visitation the logical progression from the phone call the night before. Client, Council, Vigilantes, Silence. Disparate threads; somehow becoming a web. A large, nasty, sticky, mostly still unseen web.

The problem was, it had been a long day on top of damn little sleep, and waking up in Wren's desk chair, which had been adjusted for someone a full foot shorter than he was, hadn't helped his mood any. He was in no shape to deal with a confrontation. Not now. Not today. Not yet.

But they weren't giving him any choice.

“So much for locks. Or common courtesy.” Sergei kept his voice dry, ironic. Professional. He locked the rage, the fear deep down inside, put on his very best mask and closed the apartment door behind him.
I'm going to get an ulcer.

“We waited outside for an hour. I think your doorman was about to call the police. So we decided discretion was the better part of not being arrested.” The older of the two, the familiar face, had made himself at home on the long brown leather sofa. The other, standing behind him like a soldier at parade rest, was an unknown. Insurance, Sergei decided. Not muscle—the Silence wasn't that foolhardy, to force the matter like that. But a guarantee that whatever happened it would be two to one. A compliment, if you took stock in things like that. He was disgusted to discover that he still did.

“And leaving a note to say you'd stopped by never crossed your mind,” he murmured, shrugging out of his coat and hanging it in the closet. Dusk had already settled, and he touched the control pad that turned on a scattering of lamps throughout the space. His apartment was an open space; no alcoves or half walls a shadow might hide against. What had started out early in his career as paranoia had evolved, over the years, to a personal preference. One wide archway led to the kitchen, while a metal spiral staircase led to the sleeping alcove. The fourth and seventh steps creaked.

Sergei tugged off his tie and looped it over the staircase's railing, slipping off his oxblood loafers and leaving them on the floor beside the lowest step, dress socks following, tucked inside the shoes for easier carrying. He kept his back to the two men all the while, a dual insult; “I'm not afraid of you” coupled with “you're not important enough to deal with first.” But his pulse was too fast, and he was wishing he had gone to the cocktail party he'd been invited to that night instead of coming directly home. Standing around dealing with enforced laughter and unwanted innuendoes would have been preferable to this.

“A note might be lost, or disregarded. Face-to-face, it was felt, was…wiser.”

Sergei straightened, spent a moment staring up the staircase, contemplating. Counting heartbeats until he felt reasonably balanced, and couldn't risk any more delay. Only then did he turn to face his unwelcome visitors. Andre Felhim. Tall, lean, black, with a sprinkling of gray in his close-cut hair. He was probably in his late sixties by now, but his face was that of a man a decade younger. Andre had helped to recruit Sergei, in the way back when. They'd never gotten along, but there was respect there. A good choice to send, Sergei acknowledged. Well, nobody had ever said the Silence was stupid. Far from it.

“What, so I can tell you to get lost face-to-face? Fine. Get lost. Better yet, get stuffed.”

“Now, Sergei Kassianovich…”

“Leave my father out of this.” Scraping old wounds, using his patronymic. No, the Silence wasn't stupid. But they did take risks. “When you wait for an invitation before appearing in my home, then I will be polite. When you come here to threaten—”

“There have been no threats made!” Andre shot off the sofa like an uncoiled spring, sounded truly outraged. His companion, a short but strongly-built redhead, looked as though he regretted not being the one to have made the threat. Sergei didn't ask Andre the other man's name. Didn't care to know.

“You're shadowing my partner. Making not-too-veiled comments about my failure to, what was it they said—ah, ‘my failure to bring her to heel.' Like she was a dog I was supposed to train.” He glared at the older man, his shoulders squared and his mouth set in stubborn lines. “Pushing me to make deals. No. And again, no.”

“Will you hear me out, at least, before you throw us out of your home?”

Sergei locked glares with him for a long moment, then relented. “All right.” He made a seemingly careless gesture with one hand. “Make your pitch.”

“I'm not here to harass you, my boy. Nor to discuss your…ongoing negotiations with Operations.”

Right. And pigs fly.

“I merely wish to discuss a possible intersection of interests.”

“And for that you had to bring a companion?”

Andre smoothed past that comment as though it hadn't been said. “It has come to our attention that you have taken on an assignment that runs parallel with a situation we ourselves have an interest in.” He reached into his suit jacket and removed a handful of photographs, which he then handed to Sergei.

Sergei looked, then dropped them onto the coffee table between them. They fell face up, fanned out as though for display. Two of Wren in the early morning light as she was working outside the Frants building, another one of her standing next to a car he didn't recognize, and two more of the house their target lived in, taken from a slight distance but showing astonishing detail.

They had been tailing her.
Suspecting it was different from having proof, and he had to force back the beast that now rose, snarling, in his throat.
Hold, hold. Don't lose it. You can't afford to lose it.

Unaware of the danger he had been in, Andre fell into lecturer's pose, knees relaxed, arms behind his back, as though he were addressing a class of eager freshmen hanging on his every word. “Before you get indignant, I assure you we haven't made a habit of being voyeuristic. We merely—”

“Yeah, I know,” Sergei interrupted, still seething. “I assume that you have a file on Frants?” And then
oh, good going
he snarled inwardly, turning the beast on himself. A tyro's mistake, to allow anger—any emotion—to push him into such a stupid error. You never, ever gave away information—in this case, their client's name—without an equal exchange. Never assume they know anything. Their poker face might just be better, that's all.

“We do, yes,” the older man said in a tone that rebuked him for asking such a foolish question, “but our interest is rather more with the man who…acquired your client's item.”

And Wren thinks I dance around the topic,
Sergei thought without showing any of his momentary amusement. But the break allowed him to regain his calm, to step back a half step and get some perspective.
So they followed her. Think of it as unexpected backup. They weren't going to harm Wren. Not intentionally. Not while they still think I can be used to manipulate her into working for them. And not after, not unless they take us both out. And there's no reason to do that. We're potential benefits, not liabilities.
“Why?”

Irritation broke through Andre's calm exterior. “Oh, come now, Sergei. We taught you better than that.” Sergei gave himself a point for the lapse. Maybe a point and a half, the way the vein in Andre's neck pulsed.

“You knew about this ‘collector' and didn't think to tell us.” The redhead spoke for the first time. His voice was Eastern Seaboard boarding-school perfect, his accent just as clearly disgusted. With Sergei, with the situation, with having to waste his time in this apartment on a matter that should never have become a matter at all, if people had just hewed to orders and regulations and Told All the moment they learned it. A True Believer. Sergei wondered if he'd ever been that bad. Probably.

Time I took back control of this situation.
Taking off his suit jacket, he draped it over the back of the leather recliner. His favorite reading chair, with a gooseneck lamp perfectly positioned to shine the best illumination on a book. He resisted the lure of its cushions, wanting to remain on his feet and alert. “What was there to tell? A lot of people think they want to rub up against the magical. Most of them wouldn't know it if they got slapped in the face with a true Artifact. I had no reason to believe that he was any different.”

“It's not your place to make judgment calls like that. You should have reported him—and any other individual who came looking for items they should not have.”

The hell I should have.
“Andre, get your dog off my ankle.” Sergei knew he was screwing this up; they had gotten him on the defensive, second-guessing his own actions, but there was a spark of righteous indignation fueling him now, in addition to the anger and fear. Where the hell did they get off, harassing him like this?
They're desperate. There's blood in the water, somewhere.
And he cursed himself again for dropping so completely out of sight that he didn't know the gossip that was going around the Silence. Didn't know what had driven them to push so hard for the thing he'd told them they could never have—Wren. He should have read the tone of Fatal Friday better. Dancy, Adam; they had both tried to warn him. So had Douglas, in his own rat-bastard way….

“I'm just one man. You telling me no one has been assigned to tracking things like this, that you have to rely on one burned-out Handler and a twenty-something lonejack to solve your problems?”

“You're hardly burned out,” Felhim said, trying to soothe the roiled waters like the diplomat he had once been.

“I am,” Sergei said without rancor, the calm coming at the cost of sudden, total exhaustion. “And you know it. That's the only reason they let me walk away ten years ago. First, you wanted me to report in—then, to report on what I'm doing, report on what I'm seeing and hearing. And now, suddenly, you need more. You start to order me around, like I was one of you again. Are things really that bad….” He paused, purely for effect, then decided the hell with it and went for the kill. “Or is it that you know Genevieve won't go anywhere without me?”

“You so sure about that?” the redhead asked, a challenge.

“Jorgunmunder,” Andre said, warning him off that avenue of attack. But Sergei didn't even have to process the question.

“Yeah. I am.”

Yeah, he was. It was astonishing, really, how obvious it should have been to him, this sureness. Like a chair when you desperately needed to sit appearing directly behind you, as though by…and now he did chuckle.
As though by magic.

“It's a simple enough proposition, Didier.” Having failed to intimidate, Jorgunmunder was trying for reasonable like a shirt he knew wasn't going to fit. “Find out who was giving this Prevost fellow the direction of so many Artifacts. That's all. We'll do the rest, if you're too mercenary to deal with it.”

By “mercenary” he meant working for a living, not lapping at the Silence's teat. And by “deal with it,” he meant exactly what it sounded like. The Silence was named that for a reason. Nobody talked.

Sergei refused to rise to the bait. He leaned against the wall, arms crossed comfortably across his chest, watching the two of them with a carefully upturned quirk to his lips. Just because he hadn't played the game in years didn't mean he had forgotten how. And with Wren to practice on for all that time, he knew for a fact that the expression on his face was guaranteed to frustrate anyone it was turned on.

“Christ,” Jorgunmunder went on, reacting to Sergei's body language as though he'd read the script beforehand, “it's in everyone's best interest that the information be shut down, before someone who isn't content to just look at his pretties gets hold of too many!”

And that,
Sergei thought ruefully,
was always the problem. Everything the Silence did was reasonable. Was for the better good of humanity—as the Silence saw it.
And for the most part he agreed with their goals, their reasons.

It was just the way they used up their people. People who saw too much, did too much. Cared too damn much.
And all the doing and seeing and caring doesn't do more than stem the tide.

He would have done anything—had done everything—to keep that weary, bitter awareness out of his Wren's eyes.

And yet…they had a point. He'd worried about Wren's description of what she'd seen at the mark's house, too. “Look. I'll get what information for you I can. I always have.” Without him, they'd still have nothing more than rumors about the Council's existence. “But back off. No more shadowing, no more harassing. No more manipulating. If you've talked to Douglas then you know the most you're going to get is me, not her. Leave Wren alone. She's not to be any part of your plans.”